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THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

AND 

ITS  PLACE  IN  ETHICS 


By 
EDWIN   B.    HOLT 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND  COMPANY 

1915 


COFTBIQHT,  1915, 
BT 

HSNRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
Published  November.  1819 


THC   OUINN   4    aODEN    CO.    P»SS 
IIAHWAV,   N.  t. 


Co 

L.   H.   E. 


PREFACE 

The  problem  of  good  conduct,  both  in  practice 
and  in  ethical  theory,  ought  to  receive  some  clari- 
fication, one  would  suppose,  from  a  science  that 
studies  the  mind  and  the  will  in  their  actual  opera- 
tion. If  in  the  past  psychology  has  not  materially 
contributed  to  this  problem,  it  is  possibly  owing  to 
the  incompetence  of  psychology  to  tell  us  much 
that  is  either  true  or  useful  about  the  essential 
nature  of  mind  or  will,  or  of  the  soul.  I  believe 
that  such  has  been  the  case,  and  that  now  for  the 
first  time,  and  largely  owing  to  the  insight  of  Dr. 
Sigmund  Freud,  a  view  of  the  will  has  been  gained 
which  can  be  of  real  service  to  ethics.  In  pre- 
senting this  I  shall  disregard  the  current  comments 
on  Freud,  which  have  become  so  familiar,  for  he 
deserves  neither  the  furious  dispraise  nor  the 
frantic  worship  which  have  been  accorded  him.  He 
is  a  man  of  genius,  simply,  more  sagacious  and 
more  perspicacious  than  his  detractors  and  far 
more  sane  than  many  of  his  followers.  In  my 
opinion  both  of  these  have  failed  to  emphasize 
that  for  which  Freud  is  most  significant. 


vi  PREFACE 

The  idea  has  gone  abroad  that  the  term  *  Freud- 
ian '  is  somehow  synonymous  with  *  sexual,'  and 
that  to  read  Freud's  own  works  would  be  fairly  to 
immerse  oneself  in  the  licentious  and  the  illicit. 
This  belief,  which  makes  the  mention  of  Freud  so 
alluring  to  some  and  so  disconcerting  to  others,  is 
as  ill-founded  as  it  is  widespread.  It  is  true  that 
the  unco  prudish  would  experience  a  mauvais  quart- 
d^heure  if  they  ever  permitted  themselves  to  read 
Freud  on  the  source  and  significance  of  prudish- 
ness,  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  pruriently  curious 
would  be  baffled  to  the  point  of  tears  if  they  were  to 
search  in  Freud  for  a  stimulus  to  their  own  peculiar 
type  of  imagination.  In  short,  this  talk  of  the 
*  sexual '  in  connection  with  Freud  is  merely  an- 
other instance  of  that  infallible  instinct  of  the 
cheap  press  and  the  vulgar  mind  to  seize  on  unes- 
sentials,  whether  for  praise  or  for  blame,  and  to 
leave  the  main  fabric  unscanned. 

Now  Freud's  contribution  to  science  is  notable, 
and  in  my  opinion  epoch-making,  for  a  reason 
which  has  hardly  ever  been  mentioned.  And  this 
reason  is  that  he  has  given  to  the  science  of  mind 
a  *  causal  category ' :  or,  to  put  it  less  academically, 
he  has  given  us  a  key  to  the  explanation  of  mind. 


PREFACE  vii 

It  is  the  first  key  which  psychology  has  ever  had 
which  fitted,  and  moreover  I  believe  it  is  the  only 
one  that  psychology  will  ever  need.  Although  of 
course  these  two  statements  would  be  savagely 
disputed  by  the  comfortably  established  professors 
of  an  earlier  school,  who  are  a  bit  mystified  by 
Freud  and  suff^er  from  the  uncomfortable  apprehen- 
sion that  he  is  doing  something  to  them ;  they  know 
not  quite  what.  And  in  fact  he  is,  for  he  is  mak- 
ing them  look  hopelessly  incompetent.  This  key 
to  the  mind,  which  Freud  calls  the  '  wish,'  is  the 
subject  of  the  present  volume.  And  we  shall  con- 
sider more  particularly  the  bearing  which  this  wish- 
psychology  may  have  on  ethics.  For  this  is  a  mat- 
ter which  Freud  himself  has  said  little  about,  and 
one  which  affords,  I  think,  very  interesting  and 
practically  useful  conclusions. 

In  the  Supplement  is  reprinted  a  short  paper, 
which  first  appeared  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy^ 
Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  and  which 
undertakes  to  show  the  cardinal  importance  of  this 
same  *  wish,'  there,  however,  called  the  '  specific  re- 
sponse relation,'  in  the  general  field  of  psychology, 

E.  B.  H. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

I     The  Doctrine  of  the  *  Wish  '    .        .3 

II     The    Physiology    of    Wishes;    and 

Their  Integration  ....      47 

III     The  Wish  in  Ethics     .        .        .        .100 

IV     Some     Broader     Aspects     of     the 

Freudian  Ethics       ....    134 

Supplement — Response    and    Cogni- 
tion      153 


THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  *  WISH ' 

The  Freudian  psychology  is  based  on  the  doc- 
trine of  the*  wish,' just  as  physical  science  is  based, 
to-day,  on  the  concept  of  function.  Both  of  these 
are  what  may  be  called  dynamic  concepts,  rather 
than  static ;  they  envisage  natural  phenomena  not 
as  things  but  as  processes,  and  largely  to  this 
fact  is  due  their  preeminent  explanatory  value. 
Through  the  '  wish  '  the  '  thing '  aspect  of  mental 
phenomena,  the  more  substantive  *  content  of  con- 
sciousness,' becomes  somewhat  modified  and  rein- 
terpreted. This  *  wish,'  which  as  a  concept  Freud 
does  not  analyze,  includes  all  that  would  commonly 
be  so  classed,  and  also  whatever  would  be  called  im- 
pulse, tendency,  desire,  purpose,  attitude,  and  the 
like;  not  including,  however,  any  emotional  com- 
ponents thereof.  Freud  also  acknowledges  the  ex- 
istence of  what  he  calls  *  negative  wishes ' ;  and 
these  are  not  fears  but  negative  purposes.  An 
exact  definition  of  the  *  wish  '  is  that  it  is  a  course 

8 


4  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

of  action  which  some  mechanism  of  the  body  is  set  to 
carry  out,  whether  it  actually  does  so  or  does  not. 
All  emotions,  as  well  as  the  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
displeasure,  are  separable  from  the  *  wishes ' ;  and 
this  precludes  any  thought  of  a  merely  hedonistic 
psychology.  The  wish  is  any  purpose  or  project 
for  a  course  of  action,  whether  it  is  being  merely 
entertained  by  the  mind  or  is  being  actually  exe- 
cuted ;  a  distinction  which  is  really  of  little  impor- 
tance. We  shall  do  well  if  we  consider  this  wish  to 
be,  as  in  fact  it  is,  dependent  on  a  motor  attitude  of 
the  physical  body,  which  goes  over  into  overt  action 
and  conduct  when  the  wish  is  carried  into  execu- 
tion. 

Now  some  wishes  are  compatible  while  others  are 
antagonistic,  and  it  is  in  the  interplay  of  wishes 
that  one  finds  the  text  of  the  entire  Freudian  psy- 
chology. It  is  a  dynamic  psychology,  utterly,  al- 
though Freud  says  little  as  to  the  energy  which 
drives  the  machinery.  One  will  best,  I  think,  not 
hypothecate  to  this  end  any  such  thing  as  *  psychic 
energy,'  but  look  rather,  for  the  energy  so  ex- 
pended, in  the  nervous  system,  which  does,  in  fact, 
establish  the  motor  attitudes  and  their  conflicts, 
and  does  actuate  the  muscles  to  the  performance 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'         6 

of  conduct.  Wishes  conflict  when  they  would  lead 
the  body  into  opposed  lines  of  conduct,  for  it  is 
clear  that  the  body  cannot  at  the  same  time,  say, 
lie  abed  and  yet  be  hurrying  to  catch  a  train ;  and 
this  is  the  source  of  conflict  in  all  cases,  even  those 
where  the  actual  physical  interference  is  too  subtle 
to  be  readily  detected.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  of 
two  opposed  attitudes  only  one  can  be  carried  into 
effect ;  the  other  is  *  suppressed.'  We  shall  later 
see  how  the  suppressed  wish  can  be  still  enter- 
tained, and  whether  it  can  exert  influence.  Freud 
finds  that  many  familiar  phenomena,  such  as  wit, 
dreams,  lapses  of  memory,  and  so  forth,  are  the 
work  of  wish-conflicts.  And  with  these  we  come 
to  a  more  concrete  matter. 

Many  dreams  are  quite  obviously  the  pure  real- 
ization of  wishes ;  the  person  does,  in  his  dream, 
what  he  deep-down  wishes  to  do,  but  has  been  pre- 
vented from  doing  when  awake  by  the  cares  and 
importunities  of  the  daily  routine,  or  by  some 
other  obstacle.  The  dreams  of  children  are  usu- 
ally of  activities  which  the  mother  or  nurse  had 
forbidden  during  the  day;  so,  too,  it  is  said,  the 
dreams  of  saints  are  of  rites  and  practices  which 
the  saint  yearns  for,  but  for  which  a  prosaic  world 


6  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

provides  too  little  scope.  It  is  clear  enough  that 
all  such  dreams  are  dictated  by  wishes.  It  would 
be  a  most  pertinent  question,  however,  to  ask  how 
the  necessary  scenery  is  provided,  the  mountain  of 
sweets  for  the  child,  and  for  the  saint  the  rapturous 
vision  of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Blest.  Freud,  I 
think,  has  not  enlightened  us  here;  but  we  have 
from  other  sources  sufficient  indications  that  the 
mechanisms  of  perception  and  of  will  are  alike 
in  structure,  so  far  indeed  as  they  are  not  iden- 
tically the  same  mechanism,  to  make  probable  the 
supposition  that  '  wishes  '  can  count  on  the  co- 
operation of  the,  here  deceptive,  *  senses.' 

Such  dreams  are  in  any  case,  so  far  as  their  mo- 
tive and  cause  goes,  clear  products  of  the  wish. 
But  many  other  dreams,  the  nonsensical  and  the 
horrible,  are  not  so  readily  explained.  Herr  Pepi, 
a  medical  student,  was  called  in  the  morning  when 
it  was  time  to  get  up  and  go  to  the  hospital  for 
his  daily  rounds.  He  roused  up,  but  fell  asleep 
again,  and  dreamed  of  himself  as  lying  in  one  of 
the  beds  at  the  hospital;  at  the  head  of  the  bed 
was  one  of  the  official  cards  reading — "  Pepi  H. 
Student  of  medicine.  Age  22  years."  Then  in 
his  dream  he  said  to  himself :  "  Well,  since  I'm  al- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'         7 

ready  at  the  hospital  I  don't  have  to  get  up  to  go 
there."  Then  he  turned  over  and  slept  on.  This 
dream,  while  nonsensical,  still  clearly  expresses  the 
wish  of  one  who  wants  to  lie  abed  in  the  morning. 
But  it  provided  an  excuse  for  lying  abed,  and  this 
shows  that  more  than  this  single  wish  was  at  work 
to  produce  the  dream.  This  other  factor  was 
clearly  another  wish — to  be  at  the  hospital  as  duty 
required ;  and  this  wish,  weaker  than  the  first,  was 
strong  enough  to  transfer  to  the  hospital  the  pic-* 
ture  of  a  comfortable  morning  nap,  but  not  strong 
enough  to  interfere  further  in  the  realization  of 
the  wish  to  lie  abed.  The  dream  is  a  compromise 
between  two  wishes,  and  that  is  why  it  is  somewhat 
absurd.  Thus  we  have  a  clew  to  the  reason  for  non- 
sensical dreams ;  and  for  Freud  it  has  been,  as  gen- 
erally, the  apparent  obstacles  which  have  shed  the 
most  light.  For  here  we  begin  to  see  into  the 
mechanism  of  character. 

The  incoherent  quality  comes  from  the  com- 
promise, in  which,  because  two  or  more  wishes 
interfere,  none  is  fully  satisfied:  each  wish  is  in 
fact,  as  language  aptly  has  it,  *  compromised.' 
The  same  mechanism  is  often  evident  in  daily  life, 
as  when  with  a  great  show  of  pity  someone  dwells 


8  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

fondly  and  repetitiously  on  the  imperfections  of 
another.  Here  the  wish  to  detract  from  another 
person  is  modified  by  the  wish  to  live  up  to  con- 
vention. The  pity  is  not  genuine,  because,  as  the 
person's  conduct  shows,  it  is  not  strong  enough  to 
override  the  propensity  to  aspersion.  The  result 
is  hypocritical  and  absurd,  and  in  many  cases  goes 
so  far  as  to  be  unintelligible.  I  have  been  present 
when  a  man  literally  tortured  his  wife  on  a  quiet 
moonlight  evening  by  ostentatiously  reiterating, 
with  minor  variations,  for  two  hours  the  sedulous 
query — "  Darling,  are  you  perfectly  comfortable  ? 
Are  you  sure  you  don't  need  more  wraps  ?  "  The 
underlying  motive  (as  I  knew  from  other  sources) 
was  torture,  but  whatever  merciful  impulses  the 
husband  had  were  so  fully  expressed  in  the  form 
of  his  solicitations,  that  the  hints  and  protesta- 
tions made  to  him  by  others  present  and  by  his  wife 
availed  nothing.  The  husband  enjoyed  the  even- 
ing immensely ;  but  the  friends  were  mystified  and 
made  uncomfortable,  and  one  remarked  afterwards, 
"  He  must  be  crazy ! "  In  dreams  such  confound- 
ing of  motive  often  goes  so  far  that  the  dream  is, 
notoriously,  unintelligible.  The  most  nonsensical 
of  them  are  complicated  by  many  wishes,  and  these 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'         9 

often  of  a  deeply  suppressed  order ;  so  that  it  is  a 
long  task  to  unravel  them.  Nor  can  the  result  be 
always  described  in  a  few  pages.  I  will  give  one  of 
the  simpler  cases  of  an  apparently  meaningless 
dream.* 

A  girl  of  about  seventeen  once  asked  me  to  ex- 
plain this  dream.  "  I  met  a  certain  older  woman 
of  my  acquaintance,  on  the  street.  She  put  out  her 
hand  to  shake  hands  with  me.  I  was  about  to  do 
the  same  when  all  my  teeth  fell  out  and  into  my 
hand." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "you  clearly  do  not  like  this 
older  woman.    Why  not  ?  " 

"  No,  I  don't  like  her,"  said  she,  and  paused  so 
irresolutely  that  I  repeated  my  "  Why  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  suppose  it  is  because  she  likes  a  certain 
young  girl  of  my  own  age  and  always  tries  to  come 
in  between  us  and  keep  us  apart.  This  girl  is  my 
dearest  friend." 

"  And  with  which  of  these  is  the  thought  of 
teeth  connected  ?  " 


*  Freud's  "  Traumdeutung "  gives  many  complicated 
dream-analyses  (Deuticke,  Leipzig  and  Vienna,  3d  edition, 
1911).  The  English  translation  by  A.  A.  Brill  is  entitled 
••The  Interpretation  of  Dreams"  (Allen  &  Macmillan, 
London  and  New  York,  1913). 


10  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

"  I  have  no  idea,"  said  the  girl,  pausing  again. 
Then  she  added,  coloring  slightly,  "  The  only  thing 
I  recall  is  that  this  older  woman  when  she  kisses 
my  friend,  as  she  often  does,  will  nibble  her  cheek 
playfully  like  a  mother-cat  pretending  to  bite  her 
kitten.    And  I  hate  to  see  her  do  it." 

With  this  the  dream  was  of  course  cleared  up; 
it  was  the  polite  and  blameless  equivalent  of  say- 
ing to  the  older  woman  when  encountering  her  on 
the  street,  "  I  would  rather  lose  my  teeth  than 
greet  you  affectionately  "  (nibble)  : — a  version  of 
the  matter  which  brought  a  sudden  gleam  of  in- 
telligence to  the  face  of  the  girl  who  had  had  the 
dream.  It  is  not  often  that  a  nonsensical  dream  is 
so  easily  interpreted;  yet  even  here,  as  the  reader 
sees,  the  wishes  or  motives  involved  have  their  roots 
in  the  very  depths  of  character.  The  role  played 
by  the  teeth  is  interesting  because  it  is  halfway 
symbolic ;  that  is,  while  the  teeth  serve  as  a  symbol 
of  repugnance,  their  associated  context  in  the 
dreamer's  mind  shows  clearly  how  they  come  to 
have  such  a  meaning.*  Symbolism  is  very  com- 
mon in  dreams,  but  it  is  often  excessively  obscure. 

*  In  hysteria,  vomiting  is  regularly  a  symptom  of  re- 
pugnance, not  of  indigestion. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  '  WISH  '       H 

A  further  class  of  dreams,  those  of  anguish  and 
of  horror,  seem  less  amenable  to  the  Freudian  ex- 
planation. These  are  frequently  dreams  of  the 
death  of  a  near  relative  or  friend,  in  which  the 
dreamer  experiences  an  agony  of  sorrow  (or  re- 
morse) ..  Thus  Freud  relates:  *  "  One  day  I  find 
a  lady  very  downcast  and  tearful.  She  says,  *I 
don't  want  to  see  my  relatives  ever  again;  they 
must  abominate  me.'  Then  she  relates,  almost  in 
the  same  breath,  that  she  is  put  in  mind  of  a  dream 
(the  significance  of  which  she  of  course  does  not 
know)  which  she  had  when  she  was  four  years  old; 
and  it  runs  as  follows — *  A  lynx  or  a  fox  is  walk- 
ing along  the  roof,  and  then  something  falls  down 
or  I  fall  down,  and  they  bring  my  mother  out  of 
the  house  dead.'  Hereupon  she  weeps  bitterly.  I 
had  hardly  told  her  that  this  dream  must  signify 
that  in  her  childhood  she  wished  to  see  her  mother 
dead,  and  that  it  is  because  of  this  dream  that  she 
imagines  that  her  relatives  detest  her,  when  she 
brings  out  a  bit  of  further  evidence  to  explain  the 
dream :  she  was  once,  as  a  very  young  child,  plagued 
by  a  street-urchin  who  called  her  *  Lynx-Eye'; 
and  when  she  was  three  years  old  a  tile  from  the 
*  Op.  citaL,  S.  187. 


I 


1J8  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

roof  had  fallen  on  her  mother's  head  and  cut  it  so 
that  it  bled." 

Freud's  recognition  of  the  existence  of  such 
morbid  wishes  has  offended  some  persons,  who  pre- 
tend, I  suppose,  that  human  nature  is  not  capable 
of  anything  so  unlovely.  Yet  I  am  sure  that  no 
one  has  had  to  do  with  children  without  hearing  all 
too  frequently — "  You  mean  old  thing !  I  hope 
you  die !  So  there  now !  " — and  this  uttered  with 
all  childish  vehemence.  In  fact,  this  is  perhaps 
the  earliest  and  most  typical  reaction  of  a  child 
when  it  is  vexed  by  other,  and  especially  by  older, 
persons ;  a  situation  that  it  does  not  know  how  to 
cope  with  otherwise.  The  most  trifling  irritation 
will  often  provoke  it.  But  the  child  evidently 
finds  that  the  wish  is  futile  and  suppresses  it,  hav- 
ing hit  on  more  effective  means  for  overriding  op- 
position. Yet  if  with  years  of  discretion  the 
motives  that  suppress  such  a  wish  become  strong, 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  circumstances 
which  tend  to  keep  it  alive  and  active  may  grow  in 
gravity  and  in  urgency.  The  young  woman  who 
keeps  her  fiance  waiting  for  forty  years  while  she 
ministers  to  a  crippled  parent  has  an  indefeasible 
interest  in  the  timely  decease  of  her  burden.    And 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH*       13 

certainly  there  is  no  clergyman  but  has  often  wit- 
nessed at  funerals  how  the  chastening  hand  of  be- 
reavement is  borne  with  a  sprightliness  and  cheer, 
not  to  say  alacrity,  that  have  their  roots  elsewhere 
than  in  fortitude  and  faith. 

So  in  the  instance  just  cited  from  Freud,  if  a 
woman  feels  that  she  is  detested  by  her  relatives 
and  if  she  never  wishes  to  see  them  again,  there  are 
two  ways  of  escape — she  can  go,  or  they  can  go! 
The  dream  of  her  childhood  envisaged  the  second 
and  more  delectable  alternative;  and  when  later 
in  life  she  found  herself  in  a  similar  quandary  the 
memory  of  this  dream  persistently  suggested  itself 
to  her  more  innocent  self.  This  is  the  mechanism 
of  *  temptation.'  But  if  such  a  consummation  was 
*  wished,'  why  even  in  the  dream  should  it  be  con- 
templated with  anguish?  Freud's  answer  is  that 
while  this  was  wished,  other  wishes  also  comprised 
in  the  character  wished  the  opposite.  For  many 
other  reasons,  and  these  the  less  selfish  ones,  the 
woman  by  no  means  wished  to  see  her  relatives 
demise.  These  more  rational  wishes,  which  in  ordi- 
nary waking  hours  are  strong  enough  to  hold  the 
morbid  wish  in  abeyance,  constitute  the  individual's 
recognized  character.    It  is  they,  or  the  median- 


14  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

isms  that  embody  them,  which  need  the  recupera- 
tion of  sleep ;  it  is  they  which  *  go  to  sleep.'  Where- 
upon the  wishes  which  have  been  held  in  idleness, 
and  are  therefore  not  fagged,  are  able  to  exer- 
cise themselves  in  opposition  to  the  upper  group. 
But  sleep  is  partial  and  of  varying  degrees,  and  a 
dream  so  contrary  to  the  person's  habitual  and 
normal  attitude  cannot  be  put  through  without 
arousing  the  upper  group,  which  then  reacts  with 
just  the  same  emotions  that  it  would  have  in  face 
of  the  actual  waking  contemplation  of  the  unlovely 
wish  executed.  As  is  well  known,  the  upper  group 
is  often  completely  aroused  by  such  a  dream,  and 
the  dreamer  finds  himself  wide-awake  and  under 
strong  emotional  strain.  Freud  calls  this  upper 
group  of  wishes,  which  is  always  the  prevailing 
character  of  the  individual,  the  *  censor.'  Thus  a 
person  who  has  suppressed  wishes,  and  very  few 
have  not,  has  the  rudiments  of  double,  or  indeed 
of  multiple,  personality — a  thing  which  in  prac- 
tical morals  has  often  been  shrewdly  noted.  In 
fact,  Freud  has  amply  demonstrated  that  *  posses- 
sion by  devils '  is  not  a  merely  literary  figure  of 
the  New  Testament. 

To  the  question,  then,  whether  a  person  *  wishes 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  '  WISH  '       15 

to  have  a  painful  dream,'  Freud's  answer  is,  of 
course,  No.  But  the  submerged  part  of  a  person- 
ality contains  many  wishes  which  the  better  portion 
ordinarily  holds  in  check,  but  which,  if  they  suc- 
ceed in  realizing  themselves  even  in  a  dream,  arouse 
the  upper  personality  to  feelings  of  horror  and 
remorse.  This  view,  so  far  from  being  novel  or 
subversive,  fits  at  once  into  the  picture  which  the 
most  ancient  moralists  have  given  us.  A  fearful 
dream  is  an  exact  counterpart  on  the  plane  of 
imagination,  of  what  only  too  often  happens  in 
actual  waking  life :  a  person's  lower  self  *  gets  the 
better  of  him,'  he  commits  an  evil  deed,  instantly 
*  comes  to  himself '  again,  and  suffers  an  agony 
of  remorse.  Unmistakably  one  of  his  selves 
wished  the  evil  and  did  it,  while  another  self  sur- 
veys the  result  with  consternation.  Again  the 
same  thing  happens  in  revery,  where  the  upper  self 
(censor)  is  somewhat  relaxing  its  vigilance:  many 
a  man  in  revery  contemplates  deeds  and  projects 
which  he  would  not  let  himself  carry  out,  or  even 
think  of,  in  moments  of  complete  alertness.  But 
such  revery  is  an  instructive  indulgence,  for  it  is  a 
perfectly  just  psychological  observation  that,  "  As 
a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he."    It  might 


Ig  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

also  be  called  Freud's  motto.  The  suppressed  mo- 
tives gain  currency  if  thus  exercised,  and  by  just  so 
much  are  amalgamated  with  the  upper  self  and  be- 
come a  part  of  it.  The  *  still  small  voice '  is  the 
popular  but  just  designation  for  the  protest  of 
the  semi-dormant  upper  self  when,  in  revery, 
fancy,  or  imagination,  lower  impulses  have  suc- 
ceeded in  intruding  on  the  field  of  consciousness; 
and  I  know  of  no  more  cardinal  doctrine  for  the 
cultivation  of  moral  character  than  that  of  the  still 
small  voice.  But  of  this  later.  Our  point  here  is 
that  the  sole  difference  between  dreams,  revery,  and 
waking  life  is  in  the  degree  of  vigilance  exercised 
by  the  censor.  In  dreams  the  censor  is  most  re- 
laxed, and  evil  wishes  which  at  no  other  time  would 
be  tolerated  can  then  express  themselves.  If  there 
are  any !  The  dreams  that  a  person  has  are  signifi- 
cant of  what  does  lie  smoldering  within  him. 

Such,  in  outline,  is  Freud's  explanation  of 
dreams.  He  has  devised  a  method,  *  psycho- 
analysis,' for  deciphering  the  more  obscure  ones. 
And,  although  many  dreams  are  very  refractory, 
and  Freud  himself  looks  on  some  of  his  analyses  as 
incomplete  or  even  doubtful,  yet  the  results  are 
so  illuminating,  and  so  comparable  with  phenomena 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       17 

of  the  waking  life,  that  I  think  no  one  who  goes 
into  the  facts  and  scans  them  without  bias  will 
'doubt  the  fundamental  soundness  of  Freud's  view 
that  dreams  are  the  work  of  wishes. 

Now  suppressed  wishes  find  other  means  of  ex- 
pression than  dreams,  and  means  by  which  to  in- 
fluence the  consciousness  and  acts  of  waking  life. 
These  are  most  startlingly  evident  in  mental  de- 
rangements, and  it  was  in  connection  with  hysteria 
and  other  nervous  disorders  that  Freud  commenced 
his  study  of  human  character.  Into  this  field  we 
need  not  go,  although  it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind 
that  no  sharp  line  divides  the  normal  from  the  ab- 
normal, and  that  what  Freud  says  of  the  normal 
mechanism  is  well  substantiated  by  careful  observa- 
tion of  the  exaggerated  abnormal  cases. 

Another  phenomenon  which  shows  the  working 
of  subterranean  forces  in  character  is  that  of 
wit  and  humor.  After  reviewing  the  long  list  of 
theories  and  definitions  of  humor,  which  is  as  dense 
a  jungle  of  misconception  as  anywhere  exists, 
Freud  caps  them  all  with  his  simple  formula  that 
every  form  of  wit  or  humor  is  nothing  but  a  means 
of  '  letting  the  cat  out  of  the  bag.'  *     But  what 

^  "  Der  Witz  "  (Leipzig  and  Wien,  2d  edition,  1912). 


18  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

cat,  what  bag,  and  what  are  the  means  ?  The  cat  is 
one  of  these  suppressed  wishes,  the  bag  is  the  con- 
finement imposed  by  the  vigilant  censor,  and  the 
means  are  a  variety  of  devices  to  trick  the  censor, 
particularly  by  taking  advantage  of  the  latter's 
weak  points.  Thus  the  man  who  said,  "  The  Rev. 
Mr.  —  's  prayer  yesterday  was  the  most  eloquent 
prayer  that  has  ever  been  presented  before  a  Bos- 
ton audience,"  was  really  charging  the  preacher 
with  caring  more  about  his  audience  than  about 
God.  But  it  eludes  the  speaker's  censor  because, 
firstly,  the  remark  barely  misses  of  conveying  high 
praise ;  secondly,  because  the  same  or  similar  phrase 
with  *  sermon '  put  in  the  place  of  *  prayer '  is 
fairly  habitual  and  not  a  few  persons  are  able  to 
rattle  the  remark  off  *  without  thinking.'  For  pre- 
cisely the  same  reasons  it  can  be  counted  on  to  pass 
the  censor  of  anyone  to  whom  it  is  addressed.  In 
fact,  while  such  a  comment  is  as  derogatory  as  it 
can  well  be,  it  is  so  nicely  adjusted  to  the  weak- 
nesses of  the  average  person's  censor  that  prob- 
ably even  the  preacher  who  was  its  victim  would 
have  been  unable  to  take  serious  offense.  Thus  this 
sly  tribute  of  praise  gives  vent  to  the  teller's  sup- 
pressed attitude  of  hatred  (or  it  may  be  envy, 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       19 

etc.)  without  traversing  any  of  the  accepted  so- 
cial conventions.  And  the  censor  is  generally 
strong  on  conventions. 

And,  further,  it  clears  the  way  for  a  similar 
release  of  suppressed  wish  in  the  person  to  whom 
the  comment  is  made.  The  function  of  a  joke  in 
the  inventor's  mind  and  its  role  in  the  minds  of 
those  who  hear  or  read  it  are  not  always  identical. 
As  to  the  former,  of  course,  humor  occurs  spon- 
taneously or  not  at  all :  one  cannot  grind  out  wit  to 
order.  At  the  most  one  can  cultivate  a  facetious 
habit  of  mind,  which  means  a  censor  that  rigidly 
regards  the  conventions  but  imposes  no  more  sincere 
check  on  illicit  wishes.  One  can  see  this  in  many 
degrees,  and  one  recalls  that  the  *  saint '  is  tradi- 
tionally grave  and  shows  no  trace  of  facetiousness. 
Wit  is  never  saintly,  and  is  always  sly;  yet,  as 
will  appear,  it  need  not  be  vicious.  But  to  rack 
one's  brains  for  a  joke  is  to  court  the  impossible. 
When  a  joke  comes,  it  infallibly  produces  a  smile 
even  though  the  person  be  quite  alone.  I  think 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  although  here  I  am  going 
exactly  counter  to  Freud,*  that  this  is  due  to  an 

*  Freud,  strangely  enough  as  I  think,  refers  the  smile 
or  laugh  to  energy  coming  from  the  censor  and  due  to  the 
latter's  relaxing  its  hold  on  the  suppressed  wish. 


20  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

overflow  of  energy  from  the  hitherto  suppressed 
wish  into  the  facial  muscles ;  why  just  these  mus- 
cles is  not  known,  although  one  gets  a  hint  from 
Darwin's  book  on  "  The  Expression  of  the  Emo- 
tions in  Man  and  Animals."  After  this,  if  the 
suppressed  wish  is  sufficiently  relieved  by  the  one 
discharge,  the  joke  is  forgotten  and  the  smile 
fades ;  but  if  the  wish  has  a  larger  store  of  pent-up 
energy,  the  joke  lingers  in  the  mind  and  the  smile 
on  the  face;  it  may  be  for  days.  A  person  who 
is  habitually  in  this  condition  is,  in  the  vernacular, 
a  *  chucklehead.'  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cen- 
sor may  be  aroused  to  greater  vigilance ;  and  the 
person  *  straightens  out  his  face '  and  *  sobers 
down.'  Just  what  shall  happen  depends  on  the 
relative  strengths  of  the  suppressed  wish  and  of 
the  censor,  and  on  the  amount  of  release  which  the 
joke  affords  as  well  as  on  the  degree  of  violence 
which  it  does  to  the  censor.  A  really  *  slick '  piece 
of  wit,  like  Mark  Twain's  "  When  in  doubt,  tell  the 
truth,"  does  no  violence  to  anyone's  censor,  and  is 
a  perennial  outlet  for  one's  contempt  of  deceitful 
humanity.  It  is  sly  but  not  vicious.  Freud  here 
involves  us  in  a  doctrine  of  the  *  latent  energy  of 
suppressed  wishes ';  and  although  this  may  sound 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       21 

highly  metaphorical,  it  is  an  exact  statement  and 
easily  explained  in  the  strictest  physiological 
terms.* 

The  reception  of  a  piece  of  humor  by  a  second 
person  is  subject  to  the  same  principles,  but  the 
conditions  present  more  chance  for  variation.  In 
the  first  place,  the  recipient  may  not  have  any 
suppression  such  as  the  joke  would  release.  At  a 
dinner-table  where  the  hostess  was  a  Christian  Sci- 
entist I  once  heard  a  professional  diner-out  relate 
how,  in  a  Christian  Scientist's  family  of  his  ac- 
quaintance, the  pet  cat  had  given  birth  to  blind 
kittens.  It  was  very  sad.  The  *  Science  '  healer 
was  immediately  consulted,  and  after  ten  days  of 
absent  treatment  the  kittens  were  restored  to  per- 
fect sight.  I  tried  in  vain  to  kick  the  gentleman 
under  the  table  as  soon  as  I  scented  his  drift,  but 
he  was  not  to  be  deterred ;  the  joke  was  a  frost ;  and 
after  he  departed  the  house  rang  with  injurious 
comment : — he  was  a  *  wife-beater,'  and  she,  poor 
thing,  might  even  then  be  *  committing  suicide.'  f 

*  Cf.  the  Supplement,  "  Response  and  Cognition." 
t  And  you,  O  Gentle  Reader  (to  use  an  outworn  mode), 
I  fear  may  like  this  tale  because  it  grants  you  three  sup- 
pressed wishes — a  dig  at  Christian  Science,  one  at  the  venom 
of  indignant  hostesses,  and  a  vision  of  the  discomfiture  of 


22  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

It  is  clear  enough  that  a  piece  of  humor  will  miss 
fire  when  fired  at  a  person  who  has  not  the  requisite 
suppressed  complex.  In  the  instance  just  given 
this  second  person  had  not  only  no  such  suppres- 
sion but  the  very  reverse,  and  the  joke  was  taken 
for  exactly  what  it  was — an  act  of  aggression 
against  Christian  Science.  Clearly,  then,  humor 
can  generally  be  passed  only  among  persons  of 
similar  suppressions  (* prejudices ') ;  and  one 
notes,  in  fact,  that  it  flows  freely  in  circles  of  inti- 
mate friends,  while  it  gives  place  to  stiff  formality 
in  other  assemblies  in  proportion  to  the  lack  of  an 
established  congeniality.  The  man  who  wants  to 
be  witty  before  a  large  audience  must  limit  himself 
to  ventilating  suppressions  which  are  fairly  com- 
mon to  the  race.  The  safest  way  is  to  appeal  to 
the  Old  Adam  in  us  all  which  secretly  regards  the 
fellow-man  as  a  rival  and  prospective  antagonist. 
The  Germans  aptly  name  this  principle  *  Schaderv- 
^reudcy  for  which  we  seem  to  have  no  equivalent. 
Even  here  the  censors  are  of  different  degrees  of 
strictness,  and  one  must  adapt  one's  Schadenfreude 

that  ubiquitous  nuisance,  the  professional  funny-man.  Yes, 
and  a  fourth,  for  it  shows  me  foolishly  trying  to  avert 
impending  gloom  by  kicking  vainly  against  the  unfeeling 
air. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       23 

to  the  average  censor  of  the  audience.  One  per- 
son finds  it  excruciatingly  funny  to  hear  a  wan 
and  lonely  old  woman  sitting  down  on  a  tack ;  while 
another  can  scarcely  bear  to  hear  that  Mr.  X.,  the 
once  promising  but  now  middle-aged  and  disap- 
pointed senator,  "  has  a  glorious  future  behind 
him." 

During  the  administration  of  one  of  our  recent 
Presidents,  the  following  varieties  of  unfriendly 
comment  could  be  heard  in  different  levels  of  so- 
ciety : 

"  That   'ere   Rosyvelt   is    a  crazy 

fool "  (corresponding  to  no  censor  at  all)  . 

"  The  Old  Colonel  acts  like  a  brainless  bed- 
lamite "  (where  the  reference  to  a  time  of  extreme 
popularity,  the  charm  of  alliteration,  the  indirect- 
ness of  '  acts  like,^  and  the  somewhat  cryptic  value 
of  the  word  '  bedlamite '  all  conspire  to  beguile  a 
feeble  censor). 

"  Ah,  yes !  Teddy  is  unquestionably  our  head- 
foremost citizen  "  (affectionate  playfulness  of  the 
form  '  Teddy,'  and  approximation  to  the  encomi- 
astic '  foremost  citizen  '). 

"  In  the  last  great  Day  of  Judgment  Presi- 
dent     Roosevelt      will      undoubtedly      take     his 


^  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

place    somewhere    between    St.    George    and    St. 

Vitus." 

Probably  no  one  could  be  found  to  whom  all  four 
statements  would  be  acceptable,  although  their 
actual  purport  is  identical.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
friends  of  Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  of  his 
policies  would  not  tolerate  the  first  form,  nor 
exactly  relish  the  second  or  the  third,  while  I  have 
heard  his  warm  admirers  laugh  heartily  at  the 
fourth. 

It  may  be  asked  why,  if  this  theory  of  wit  is 
sound,  a  person  should  ever  be  brought  to  tolerate 
a  joke  at  his  own  expense;  since  he  surely  harbors 
no  suppressed  wishes  against  himself.  The  answer 
could  be  given  that  there  is  in  each  of  us,  besides 
the  self-asserting  or  egoistic  instinct  with  its  allied 
group  of  wishes,  an  *  instinct  of  self-abasement ' ;  * 
if  this  is  the  case,  any  wishes  allied  to  this  instinct, 
if  suppressed  (as  they  would  be  by  an  egoistic  cen- 
sor), would  predispose  a  person  to  relish  humor 
directed  against  himself.  I  have  not  observed  a 
case  which  I  feel  to  be  certainly  of  this  sort.  But 
I  know  of  two  other  types ;  one  false  and  one  genu- 
ine.   There  are  persons  quite  devoid  of  humor  who 

•  Cf.  William  McDougall:  "  Social  Psychology  "  (Methuen, 
London.    8th  edition,  1914,  p.  62). 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'      25 

have  learned  to  watch  others  and  to  laugh  almost 
exactly  when  and  as  they  laugh.  One  such,  a 
woman,  passes  among  her  friends  for  a  witty 
creature;  she  has  gathered  a  large  repertoire  of 
witticisms  from  the  most  approved  sources,  along 
with  the  proper  mimetic  accompaniment.  These 
she  displays  along  with  other  allurements  on  social 
occasions.  Since  she  has  a  tolerable  memory  and 
fair  intelligence,  she  carries  the  thing  off  rather 
well.  Sometimes,  however,  the  machinery  creaks ; 
her  fun  is  not  always  apposite,  and  at  the  jokes  of 
others  she  is  apt  to  laugh  a  hint  too  loudly  in  order 
to  prove  that  she  sees  the  point  and,  unfortunately, 
just  a  breath  too  late  (at  her  own  jewels  she  ex- 
hibits only  a  studied  and  discreet  smile)  ;  if  it  is 
a  joke  which  divides  the  assembly  into  amused  and 
indignant  factions,  she  is  lost.  Some  find  her  very 
amusing;  so  do  I.  Now  such  a  person,  if  con- 
fronted by  a  joke  at  his  or  her  own  expense,  and  if 
something  in  the  context  gives  him  the  clew  that  it 
is  a  joke,  has  to  decide  again  from  the  context 
whether  to  be  angry  or  to  feign  amusement.  If  the 
occasion  as  a  whole  has  been  intimate  and  friendly 
the  person  will  often  decide  to  emit  gales  of 
laughter. 


£5  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

The  other  sort  of  case  is  where  the  aspect  which 
is  pointed  out  for  ridicule  is  so  little  intrinsic  to 
the  person's  actual  self  that  this  actual  self  is 
quite  able  to  experience  Schadenfreude  over  it ;  he 
*  objectifies  '  it.  Once  in  camp  I  was  trying  to  chop 
wood,  while  another,  more  experienced  chap  looked 
on.  I  was  doing  it  abominably,  and  at  one  stroke 
that  was  worse  even  than  the  others  I  said,  to  save 
my  face,  I  suppose,  "  Oh,  dear,  I  missed  that 
stroke."  "  Which  one.''  "  said  he  dryly ;  and  set  me 
to  laughing  till  the  tears  ran  down  my  cheeks. 
Since  then  I  have  learned  to  chop  wood,  and  I 
should  now  feel  annoyed  if  an  onlooker  were  to  ask 
me  which  of  my  strokes  I  referred  to  as  the  un- 
successful one.  When  grown-ups  assemble  for  a 
frolic  and  play  children's  games,  they  laugh  as 
heartily  and  as  genuinely  at  their  own  awkwardness 
and  failures  as  at  those  of  others.  A  man  or  woman 
not  doing  so  betrays  the  fact  that  he  or  she  is  not 
suflSciently  mature  to  have  left  the  petty  prowesses 
of  childhood  behind;  but  still  accounts  them  an 
adornment  of  personality  and  a  matter  for  pride. 
This  in  an  adult  is  *  arrested  development.' 

One  further  point  about  wit.  The  man  to  whom 
a  joke  spontaneously  occurs  usually  merely  smiles, 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       27 

though  he  sometimes  laughs ;  while  the  man  to 
whom  the  joke  is  narrated  usually  laughs,  though 
he  may  merely  smile.  This  difference  is  due  to 
the  incubation  process  in  the  former  case,  where 
the  suppressed  wish  is  working  against  opposition, 
and  by  the  time  it  gets  to  the  surface  it  has  not  so 
much  energy  left  to  flow  over  into  the  facial  mus- 
cles. In  the  man  to  whom  a  joke  is  told  the  sup- 
pressed wish  is  released  suddenly  and  without  effort 
on  its  own  part,  so  that  its  whole  energy  passes 
into  the  laugh.  Apart  from  this  factor  the  phe- 
nomenon depends  solely  on  the  relative  strengths  of 
wish  and  censor. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  Freud's  doctrine  of  wit.  The 
mechanism  is  the  same  as  that  which  produces 
dreams,  the  only  difference  being  that  since  in  the 
latter  case  the  censor  is  partially  in  abeyance,  the 
wishes  which  can  then  manifest  themselves  are  of 
a  sort  so  profoundly  suppressed  that  they  could 
hardly  pass  the  waking  censor,  even  in  the  form  of 
wit.  They  are  of  things  too  deep  for  jesting;  as 
in  the  case  narrated  of  little  *  Ljmx-Eye.'  They 
are  indeed  usually  quite  unknown  to  the  waking 
consciousness,  so  that  there  is  no  more  effectual 
means  for  exploring  the  hidden  depths  of  one's  own 


28  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

character  than  the  careful  interpretation  of  one's 
own  dreams.  Here,  too,  the  censor  may  be  suffi- 
ciently alert  to  require  the  seditious  impulse  to  as- 
sume a  highly  disguised  form;  as  in  the  case  of 
wit.  On  the  other  hand,  all  such  suppressions  as 
can  come  out  in  wit  are  just  so  much  the  freer  to 
express  themselves  during  sleep;  and  they  do  so 
with  the  greater  license,  as  may  be  seen  by  a  com- 
parison of  obscene  jokes  with  obscene  dreams. 
Both  wit  and  dreams  reveal  the  deeper  levels  of 
character,  and  Freud  is  entitled  to  say:  Tell  me 
what  a  man  laughs  at  and  dreams  about,  and  I  will 
tell  you  what  man  he  is. 

It  is  not  alone  in  these  two  classes  of  phenomena 
that  suppressed  wishes  come  into  evidence.  They 
manifest  themselves,  as  some  of  the  foregoing 
illustrations  have  intimated,  in  every  act  of  daily 
life.  And  this  is  the  more  important  fact  for  our 
present  aim,  for  it  shows  us  *  wishes '  or,  better, 
purposes  so  little  suppressed  that  we  can  observe 
them  actually  operating  to  guide  or  misguide  the 
conduct  hour  by  hour  of  any  human  being.  And 
here  we  begin  to  see  that  character  is  nothing  but 
an  assemblage  of  purposes,  and  that  the  question 
for  ethics  is — ^What  shall  the  purposes  be? — and, 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'      29 

How  shall  they  be  organized?  But  I  must  not 
anticipate. 

Freud,  whose  professional  interest  is  medical,  has 
written  a  fascinating  book,  called  in  English  "  The 
Psychopathology  of  Everyday  Life,"  *  and  several 
shorter  monographs  on  the  less  conspicuous  mani- 
festations of  wish  interaction.  These,  with  several 
able  works  that  they  have  inspired,!  establish  a 
new  art  of  reading  character  and  enable  us  for  the 
first  time  to  study  the  subject  intelligently.  Here, 
as  always  with  a  new  source  of  insight,  such  knowl- 
edge as  we  previously  had  of  character  is  not  sub- 
verted, but  amplified  and  made  more  precise.  We 
have  always  to  some  extent  read  one  another's 
character  without  knowing  quite  how ;  the  novelist, 
the  dramatist,  and  the  actor  have  undertaken  to 
depict  it.  I  believe  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  now  for  the  first  time  we  know  what  char- 
acter is. 

In  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  everyday  life  the 

*  Berlin,  4th  edition,  1912:  English  translation  by  A.  A. 
Brill   (Unwin,  London,  and  Macmillan,  New  York,  1914.) 

f  Of  these  perhaps  the  most  notable  are  the  works  of  Dr. 
Ernest  Jones.  His  "  Papers  on  Psycho-Analysis "  (Wm. 
Wood,  New  York,  1913)  are  the  best  single  work  in  English 
from  which  to  derive  an  understanding  of  the  whole 
Freudian  psychology. 


90  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

subconscious  motives  are  often  not  deeply  sup- 
pressed; so  little  so,  in  fact,  that  it  is  more  a 
question  of  their  being  for  the  moment  in  or  out  of 
*  attention.'  Thus  there  are  many  varieties  of 
handshake — the  robust,  the  anemic,  the  cordial 
and  sincere,  the  officially  *  cordial '  but  actually 
indifferent,  the  disdainful,  the  hostile,  the  hand- 
shake of  commerce  (hard  grip  with  eyes  sedulously 
averted),  etc.,  etc.  We  all  *  instinctively  '  read  this 
silent  language,  and  profit  by  it;  and  the  finer 
nuances  are  contained  in  small  tensions  and  pres- 
sures that  a  third  person  often  cannot  see.  Thus 
when  at  introduction  a  person  grasps  your  hand 
with  all  apparent  cordiality,  and  at  the  same  time 
you  feel  it  infinitesimally  but  firmly  propelled  away 
from  himself,  you  know  that  the  meaning  is  '  So  far 
and  no  farther;  and  so  far  only  for  the  sake  of 
appearances.'  The  person  doing  this  is  often  quite 
unaware  of  the  slight  pushing  away  of  your  hand, 
unaware  of  the  little  part-gesture  that  so  belies  the 
expression  of  his  face ;  yet  at  another  moment  he  is 
probably  conscious  enough  of  some  sort  of  un- 
friendly feeling  toward  you.  The  person  has  lied 
with  his  face  and  with  the  general  gesture  of  his 
hand,  but  in  spite  of  himself  the  motive  to  be  con- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       31 

cealed  has  significantly  qualified  his  act.  The  fact 
is  this;  one  cannot  extend  one's  hand  toward  an- 
other with  cordiality  (i.e.,  to  seize  and  to  retain) 
when  another  motive  within  one  is  making  for  a 
different  use  of  the  same  muscles.  A  close  ob- 
server would  undoubtedly  detect  equivocation  in 
the  facial  expression  as  well.  This  hindrance  be- 
sets every  lie,  whether  white,  black,  or  gray. 

These  motives  which  unconsciously  shade  and 
qualify  all  overt  conduct,  and  which  are  not  so 
deeply  suppressed  but  that  they  can  at  another 
time  come  to  consciousness  and  themselves  deter- 
mine the  overt  conduct,  are  called  by  Freud  *  pre- 
conscious  '  ('  vorbewusst ')  ;  and  the  distinction  be- 
tween conscious  and  preconscious  includes  the  ordi- 
nary psychological  distinction  between  the  field  of 
*  attention  '  and  *  introspection  '  and  the  *  fringe  of 
consciousness,'  the  subconscious,  etc.  From  the 
preconscious  there  is  every  shade  of  gradation 
down  to  the  deeply  suppressed.  Furthermore,  pre- 
conscious motives,  like  conscious  ones,  are  invari- 
ably reenf  orced  by  others  which  lie  deeper  and  these 
by  others  still  more  deeply  suppressed,  and  so  on 
down.    A  few  illustrations. 

In    treating    of   writing   in    his    "  Papers    on 


92  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

Psvcho-Analysis,"  Dr.  Ernest  Jones  describes  how 
his  typist,  who  has  previously  worked  in  a  lawyer's 
oflSce,  is  prone  in  copying  his  manuscripts  to  mis- 
take his  own  words  for  legal  terms  more  habitual 
to  her ;  thus  she  will  read  and  write  down  *  illegal ' 
for  'iOogicdl,*  etc.  Dr.  Jones  adds  (p.  71),  "I 
have  found  that  distinctness  of  calligraphy  is 
powerless  to  prevent  such  mistakes."  Why  '  cal- 
ligraphy'?  thought  I,  since  of  course  calligraphy  is 
necessarily  distinct,  and  Jones  besides  being  a  care- 
ful writer  perfectly  knows  his  classics.  Of  course 
he  had  unconsciously  written  *  calligraphy  '  instead 
of  *  chirography,'  because  of  the  delicate  boast 
which  is  thus  conveyed  that  his  handwriting  is 
always,  even  when  indistinct,  '  beautiful.'  To  this 
extent  his  ego-complex  had  eluded  his  censor.  This 
was  too  good  to  lose,  so  at  the  bottom  of  the  page 
I  wrote  in  pencil,  with  reference  to  *  calligraphy  ' 
above,  "  Should  be  *  chiro- ' :  Another  case  of 
Verschreiben  [lapsus  calami}  w.  odious  cause." 
And  then  the  joke  was  on  me.  I  had  fully  intended 
to  write  *  obvious,'  and  was  as  astonished  to  see 
*  odious  '  as  if  another  person  had  written  it.  And 
another  had — my  own  suppressed  other  which  had 
been  egregiously  condemning  Dr.  Jones's  far  less 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       33 

blameworthy  slip  of  the  pen.  Not  every  page  of 
print  records  thus  three  slips ;  but  they  are  fre- 
quent and  almost  invariably  symptomatic.  To 
show  the  continuity  of  these  suppression  phenom- 
ena, it  should  be  noted  here  that  my  'odious'  for 

*  obvious  '  will  by  another  person  be  accounted  a 

*  mere  slip  of  the  pen,'  '  pure  accident '  ('  like 
nonsensical  dreams  '),  a  '  joke  '  on  me,  a  significant 
symptom  about  me,  or  a  hateful  piece  of  '  spite  ' — 
according  to  the  motives  in  that  other  person's 
mind  and  their  relative  strength. 

It  is  well  known  that  an  author  cannot  read  his 
own  proof  so  well  as  another  person  can  who  is  less 
tempted  to  preoccupation  with  the  contents;  and 
many  persons  read  their  own  proofs  twice,  once  for 
the  thought  and  again  for  the  spelling,  etc.;  be- 
cause each  set  of  considerations  suppresses  for  the 
time  being  the  other.  But  habit  and  other  pre- 
conscious  motives  exercise  specific  influence  as  well. 
For  the  first  few  times  of  my  seeing  the  words 
'  Cort  Theatre  '  I  read  them  *  Court  Theatre.'  Dr. 
Jones,  an  Englishman,  relates  how  on  searching  an 
American  newspaper  for  English  political  news,  his 
attention  was  caught  by  the  heading  '  General 
Danger ' ;  on  looking  more  closely  he  saw  that  it 


84  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

was  *  German  Danger.'  Where  one  word  has  two 
meanings,  the  wrong  meaning  is  often  *  read  in.' 
Once  after  the  second  of  a  series  of  three  sub- 
scription dances,  I  sent  to  the  person  in  charge  (a 
university  professor)  to  obtain  two  extra  tickets 
for  *  the  last  dance.'  He  wrote  me  back,  "  The 
'last'  dance  has  occurred.  You  probably  mean 
the  next."  But  so  eager  had  he  been  to  make  me 
out  a  fool  that  he  inclosed  no  tickets,  and  I  had  to 
write  again  to  assure  him  that  it  was  not  to  a 
dance  which  had  taken  place  that  I  was  now  plan- 
ning to  bring  friends.  At  that  time  I  had  never 
heard  of  Freud  and  was  utterly  mystified  by  such 

*  unaccountable  stupidity.'     Undoubtedly  the  man 

*  apperceived '  my  letter  as  a  plain  request  for 
tickets  to  *  last  week's  dance ' ;  and  this  trick  his 
preconscious  egoism  played  on  him. 

In  reading  aloud,  slips  of  the  tongue  are  in  the 
same  way  symptomatic,  and  it  is  well  known  how 
one's  inner  attitude  toward  the  theme  alters  one's 
word-emphasis;  it  is  practically  impossible  for 
anyone  except  a  professional  actor  to  read  with 
feeling  and  *  expression '  a  composition  with  which 
one  is  not  in  sympathy.  Nor  Is  the  actor's  ability 
to  do  so  a  matter   of  habit  and   training;   the 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       35 

mimetic  professions  attract  a  peculiar  type  of  per- 
son— far  below  the  average  in  steadfastness  of 
character  (settled  convictions,  point  of  view,  etc.), 
and  this  lack  compensated  by  an  abnormal  develop- 
ment of  egoism.  Having  little  or  no  ^ed  char- 
acter of  his  own,  the  actor  is  by  virtue  of  this  very 
defect  able  to  fall  into  any  role  that  is  handed  him 
ready-made;  he  has  no  deeply  ingrained  wishes, 
suppressed  or  other,  which  work  against  his  '  part.' 
He  can  be  all  things  to  all  men ;  while  his  ego- 
complex  is  always  gratified  (however  disgraceful 
the  role)  by  the  glamour  of  protagonism.*  A  man 
or  woman  with  positive  character  is  disqualified 
for  being  an  all-round  actor,  and  will  succeed  only 
if  he  or  she  sticks  to  a  certain  *  line  '  of  *  congenial ' 
roles ;  and  what  this  *  line '  shall  be  is  determined 
by  both  his  conscious  and  subconscious  wishes. 
The  fact  accounts  for  certain  peculiarities  of 
dramatic  professional  life. 

In  view  of  the  only  too  obvious  and  universally 
acknowledged  fact  that  a  man's  general  trend  of 

*  My  first  hint  of  this  was  from  a  shrewdly  observed 
short  story  of,  I  believe,  Alphonse  Daudet's.  Since  then 
I  have  seen  at  first  hand  ample  confirmation  of  the  point. 
Out  of  his  *  part '  the  actor  is  not  infrequently  a  down- 
right imbecile,  and  a  monster  of  egoism.  The  actor's  is 
merely  the  excessively  mercurial  and  labile  character. 


36  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

conversation,  like  his  deeds,  expresses  his  character, 
it  is  amusing  to  see  with  what  incredulity  persons 
wiU  often  receive  the  statement  that  the  finer  de- 
tails of  speech  and  action  (such  as  *  slips  of  the 
tongue '  and  the  previously  mentioned  '  slips  of 
the  pen ')  are  significant  as  well.  A  man  once 
even  argued  with  me  that  the  manner  of  a  hand- 
shake possessed  no  significance.  And  lapsus 
lingtuE  are  often  accounted  one  of  the  pet  absurd- 
ities of  the  Freudians.  Once  in  going  to  make  a 
call  on  Mrs.  A.  I  had  to  pass  the  house  of  Mrs.  B., 
who  was  sitting  on  her  front  verandah.  I  am  al- 
ways irritated  by  Mrs.  B.  and  at  this  time  was 
feeling  particularly  out  of  patience  with  her  be- 
cause she  had  not  shown  herself  very  neighborly 
during  a  recent  illness  of  Mrs.  A.  But  I  like  Mr. 
B.  immensely  and  wish  to  *  keep  in '  with  the 
family ;  so  that  I  had  to  nibble  Mrs.  B.'s  bait  and 
spend  an  impatient  half-hour  on  her  verandah. 
When  I  arose  to  go  I  undertook  to  be  amiably 
untruthful  and  to  say,  "  I'm  so  glad  that  you 
were  out  on  the  verandah  as  I  was  going  by."  But 
my  treacherous  lips  actually  brought  out,  "  I'm  so 
sorry  that  you  were,"  etc.  The  reader  may  be 
skeptical  as  to  the  cause  of  this  slip ;  but  Mrs.  B. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'       S7 

was  not,  and  did  not  invite  me  to  her  house  for 
over  a  year ;  as  served  me  quite  right. 

The  skepticism  of  many  persons  in  regard  to 
the  symptomatic  quality  of  these  little  lapses  is 
in  itself  an  interesting  phenomenon.  Firstly,  I 
detect  in  myself  a  reluctance  to  urging  the 
point : — the  other  man  wags  his  head  and  chuckles 
so  patronizingly,  "  Oh,  you  Freudians  are  all 
daft."  I  almost  burst  with  suppressed  merriment, 
for,  having  done  my  duty  in  offering  a  valuable 
secret,  the  secret  is  still  mine:  my  censor  is  dis- 
armed because  I  have  done  my  best  and  been 
mocked;  and  so  Schadenfreude  is  let  loose.  I  am 
little  disposed  to  press  the  matter.  An  aged  rustic 
at  a  circus  gazed  long  and  uncomprehendingly  at 
the  cassowary  and  after  a  time  exclaimed  aloud, 
"  Gosh  dern  it  all ;  ther'  ain't  no  sech  bird !  "  The 
cassowary,  it  is  said,  continued  to  smile,  and  was 
not  moved  to  argue  the  point. 

Secondly,  the  skeptical  are  often  made  so  by  a 
suppressed  wish.  Apart  from  the  common  reluc- 
tance in  persons  to  accept  a  truth  frankly  which 
they  see  is  so  simple  that  they  ought  to  have  found 
it  out  for  themselves,  many  persons  have  the  dim 
but  instantaneous  intuition  that  if  the  little  nuances 


38  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

of  conduct  are  symptomatic,  their  own  lives  must 
be  one  long  self-betrayal.  Therefore  this  must 
not  and  shall  not  be  true ;  they  will  not  believe  it. 
Against  such  a  disconcerting  discovery  the  (partly 
suppressed)  ego  defends  itself  and  obscures  the 
man's  *  critical '  judgment.  I  once  met  a  fairly 
well  educated  business  man  who  thus  passionately 
rejected  everything  pertaining  to  Freud.  The  man 
was  himself  one  of  the  most  unconscionable  liars 
who  ever  lived;  he  distorted  every  fact  to  his  own 
liking,  and  so  grossly  that  few  persons  were  misled 
except  (in  the  end)  himself.  He  came  to  be 
gravely  self -deluded,  and  his  life  was  one  long  un- 
conscious self -exposure.  This  man  could  see  noth- 
ing but  nonsense  in  Freud.  Early  in  life  he  had 
calculated,  as  so  many  do,  that  a  lie  is  best  couched 
in  the  form  of  a  *  reluctant  admission,'  as  thus : 
"  I  cannot  any  longer  resist  the  conviction  that  So- 
and-so  is  a  complete  failure  in  business."  (From 
which  you  could  safely  infer  that  So-and-so  was  a 
successful  and  hated  rival  of  this  man.)  This 
euphemistic  precaution  finally  crystallized  into  the 
set  phrase,  "  I  confess  frankly  that,"  etc.,  which 
finally  was  observed  by  the  man's  acquaintances 
(non-Freudians)  so  invariably  to  lead  up  to  an 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'      39 

amazing  whopper  that  they  in  turn  fell  into  a 
habit.  In  talking  to  one  another,  if  one  of  them 
caught  himself  stretching  the  truth,  he  would  cor- 
rect himself  merely  by  playfully  adding,  "  I  con- 
fess it  frankly."  The  man  in  question  had  alleged 
that  he  had  *  never  dreamed,'  but  one  evening  when 
dreams  were  the  topic  of  conversation,  and  a  per- 
son seemed  to  be  *  out  of  it '  who  had  never  had  any 
dreams,  he  proceeded  to  narrate  some  of  his  own 
(the  persons  present  were  comparative  strangers 
and  might  be  expected  not  to  know  of  his  interest- 
ing idiosyncrasy)  until  a  Freudian  present  was 
moved  to  a  point  of  honor,  and  exclaimed,  "  I  beg 
your  pardon,  Sir,  but  since  you  are  not  a  Freudian, 
you  are  unwittingly  making  the  most  intimate 
revelations.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  an  eavesdropper, 
even  in  such  a  way."  This  abandoned  person, 
whose  motto  had  become  literally,  "  Evil  be  thou 
my  good,"  exhibited  later  in  life,  it  was  said,  an 
almost  pitiful  emotional  recoil  at  any  mention  of 
deceit  and  untruth,  and  at  one  time  was  known  to 
say,  "  The  word  *  lie '  is  not  in  my  lexicon."  It 
scarcely  needed  to  be. 

Illustrations  of  the  influence  of  more  or  less 
suppressed  *  wishes  '  on  all  phases  of  life  could  be 


40  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

multiplied  without  number ;  for  in  fact  life  itself  is 
nothing  but  these  wishes  working  themselves  out  in 
action.  Some  of  them  are  *  conscious,'  others 
*  preconscious,'  while  others  are  hidden  more  deeply 
in  the  once  mysterious  levels  of  the  subconscious. 
The  reader  who  cares  to  follow  this  aspect  of  our 
subject  further  will  find  a  great  store  of  examples 
in  the  volume  by  Dr.  Jones  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  and  in  the  works  of  Freud  himself.  I  will 
narrate  but  one  further  case,  because  it  is  unlike 
any  which  I  have  found  recorded  and  shows  an 
even  subtler  working  of  the  unconscious  than  is 
sometimes  met  with.  I  was  present  at  the  incident 
to  be  related,  and  will  vouch  for  the  accuracy  of 
the  account.  Some  of  the  *  wishes  '  involved  are 
of  the  sort  that  more  nearly  resemble  *  subconscious 
ideas.' 

On  a  day  in  July,  five  men,  M.,  L.,  H.,  and  two 
others,  all  intimate  friends,  spent  the  afternoon  at 
a  country-club  playing  golf.  A  sixth  man,  T.,  an 
intimate  friend  of  all  except  of  H.,  with  whom  he 
was  merely  acquainted,  was  to  dine  with  the  party 
on  the  verandah  of  the  club-house.  T.  arrived  late 
and  found  the  five  friends  seated  at  table  and  his 
own  place  waiting  for  him.    In  the  course  of  the 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH*       41 

evening,  conversation  fell  on  a  certain  Miss  Z.,  a 
distant  cousin  of  T.'s,  and  a  person  with  whom  all 
six  of  the  men  were  more  or  less  acquainted.  Miss 
Z.  was  an  attractive  young  woman  who  had  taken  a 
doctorate  of  philosophy,  and  written  a  book  or  two 
on  esthetics ;  she  had  recently  become  engaged  to  a 
young  architect,  a  speciaUst  in  concrete  construc- 
tion, and  was  to  be  married  in  the  following  month. 
M.,  L.,  H.,  T.,  and  probably  the  other  two,  knew 
these  items.  When  Miss  Z.  was  mentioned,  L. 
turned  to  H.  and  said,  "  Tell  T.  [her  cousin]  what 
you  said  this  afternoon  about  Miss  Z.'s  engage- 
ment." H.  turned  this  off  lightly,  and  went  on  to 
something  else ;  whereupon  L.  said  again,  "  Oh,  go 
ahead!  Tell  T.  what  you  said."  H.  evaded  the 
point  once  more,  and  undertook  to  change  the 
subject.  Then  T.,  whose  curiosity  was  now 
aroused,  broke  in,  "  Oh,  come  on,  H. !  What  was 
it  about  Miss  Z.'s  engagement?  "  H.  again  par- 
ried. 

At  this  so  marked  reluctance  on  the  part  of  H. 
to  repeat  his  remark  about  Miss  Z.  and  her  engage- 
ment, T.  (her  cousin)  began  to  suspect  that  the 
speech  had  been  in  some  way  derogatory  to  Miss  Z. 
This  exasperated  T.,  who,  for  an  intelligible  but  not 


4je  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

a  very  good  reason,  already  slightly  disliked  H. 
Then  T.,  who  had  only  just  arrived  on  the  scene 
and  had  no  knowledge  of  the  speech  which  H.  re- 
fused to  repeat,  broke  out  with  considerable  heat 
and  made  the  apparently  idiotic  declaration: — 
*•  Well,  if  you  won't  tell  it,  I  will! "  H.  still  re- 
fused, and  T.  then  brought  out  from  no  visible 
source :  "  Well,  what  you  said  was  that  Miss  Z.  is 
going  to  exchange  the  abstract  for  the  concrete !  " 

This  was  in  fact  exactly  what  H.  had  said  in  the 
afternoon,  and  what  L.  had  tried  to  get  him  to 
repeat.  As  aU  the  persons  present  knew  that  T. 
had  had  no  opportunity  of  learning  what  the  re- 
mark had  been,  their  astonishment  amounted  to 
consternation.  The  most  astonished  person  of  all 
was  T.  himself;  while  H.  was  silent  and  a  trifle 
sullen,  as  if  he  half  suspected  that  a  trick  had  been 
played  on  him. 

This  incident  more  nearly  resembles  *  thought- 
transference  '  than  any  other  that  I  have  wit- 
nessed; and  I  happen  to  know  positively  that  T. 
was  in  no  way  apprised  of  H.'s  remark  before  he, 
T.,  reproduced  it.  Nevertheless  the  explanation 
is  simple.  The  little  word-play  on  which  the  inci- 
dent turns  is  derived  by  a  simple  process  from 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH'      43 

very  simple  data — Miss  Z.'s  quality  of  femme- 
savante,  and  her  fiance's  of  concrete  builder.  It 
occurred  '  spontaneously  '  to  the  minds  of  both  H. 
and  T.  This  is  in  itself  no  more  remarkable  than 
the  case  of  two  acquaintances  meeting  on  a  cloudy 
morning,  and  saying  simultaneously,  each  with  a 
glance  at  the  other's  umbrella,  "  Ah,  I  see  that 
you  are  expecting  rain."  In  our  case  the  observa- 
tion passed  the  incubation  process  in  H.'s  mind  in 
the  afternoon,  and  was  consciously  spoken  by  him 
to  his  friends.  In  T.'s  mind  it  was  still  in  the  in- 
cubation and  had  never  come  to  consciousness,  for 
T.  so  affirms,  and  says  further  that  until  the  words 
came  out  of  his  mouth  he  had  no  idea  as  to  what  he 
was  going  to  say,  to  back  up  his  rash  challenge  to 
H.  This  shows  that  the  speech  was  passed  through 
its  last  stages  of  incubation  and  brought  to  utter- 
ance by  the  stimulus  of  the  peculiar  social  situa- 
tion; especially  by  the  slight  vexation  felt  toward 
H.  That  the  speech  should  have  come  out  without 
conscious  foreknowledge  of  what  it  was  to  be  is 
perfectly  natural ;  if  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  most 
of  our  talk  is  uttered  in  this  way. 

The  two  most  interesting  questions  involved  are : 
why  H.  had  refused  to  repeat  his  so  innocent  re- 


4«  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

mark  of  the  afternoon,  and  why  T.  was  prompted 
to  risk  a  chaUenge  which,  since  he  was  not  con- 
gcious  of  anything  wherewith  to  back  it  up,  was 
practically  certain  to  put  him  in  a  silly  predica- 
ment. As  to  the  former,  it  is  safe  to  conjecture 
that  H.  secretly  disliked  T.  perhaps  even  more 
than  T.  disliked  H.,  and  that  when  called  on  by  L. 
to  repeat  himself  for  the  benefit  of  T.,  had  slightly 
the  feeling  of  being  *  put  through  his  paces,'  being 
shown  off  to  please  T.  This  he  would  certainly 
resist;  particularly  as  the  joke  to  be  repeated  was 
now  stale  for  four  persons  there  present  whom  he 
did  like.  This  feeling,  that  one's  dignity  is  being 
invaded,  is  very  deeply  rooted,  and  one  has  often 
seen  dogs,  cats,  and  babies  absolutely  refuse  to 
exhibit  their  little  tricks  and  accomplishments 
when  commanded  to  do  so  before  a  stranger ;  in  such 
cases  I,  if  I  am  the  stranger,  turn  my  back  and 
the  trick  is  instantly  performed. 

Secondly,  as  to  T.'s  foolish  challenge.  The  evi- 
dence itself  shows  that  T.  did  not  know  *  con- 
sciously '  what  he  expected  to  say  further,  for  had 
he  known  he  would  almost  certainly  have  expressed 
his  irritation  by  saying :  not,  "  Well,  if  you  won't 
tell  it,  I  will ! "  but,  "  You  needn't  trouble  your- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  'WISH*         45 

self  to  repeat  your  silly  joke;  it  was  only  that 
Miss  Z.  is  going  to  exchange  the  abstract  for  the 
concrete."  The  speech  actually  made  sounds  very 
much  like  the  small  boy's  challenge  to  some  slightly 
bigger  tormentor,  "  If  you  don't  gim'me  back  my 
jackknife,  I'U,  I'll,  I'll "  Both  speeches  ex- 
press anger,  but  in  that  of  T.  the  note  of  impotence 
is  replaced  by  one  of  foolhardiness.  This  is  evi- 
dence, I  think,  that  T.'s  subconsciousness  held  in 
readiness  not  merely  the  play  on  *  abstract  '-*  con- 
crete,' but  a  more  or  less  comprehensive  plan  of 
action  (*  wish ')  with  regard  to  the  situation  as  a 
whole:  T.'s  upper  consciousness  could  go  on  rant- 
ing as  rashly  as  it  liked,  for  T.'s  subconsciousness 
had  guessed  the  answer  to  the  conundrum,  and  was 
pretty  confident  of  its  being  the  correct  answer :  it 
would  produce  it  when  wanted.  As  it  did.  This 
would  be  a  very  simple  achievement  for  the  subcon- 
sciousness, in  comparison  with  the  remarkable  cases 
observed  by  Dr.  Morton  Prince  in  "  Miss 
Beecham  "  and  other  of  his  patients.* 

This  completes  our  analysis.  The  case  is  merely 
an  instance  of  the  interplay  between  wishes  and 

*  "  The  Dissociation  of  a  Personality  "  (Longmans,  Green, 
London,  1906).  "  The  Unconscious "  (Macmillan,  New 
York,  1914). 


46  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

ideas,  partly  conscious  and  partly  subconscious, 
taking  place  under  peculiarly  dramatic  circum- 
tances.  It  would  easily  have  converted  a  too- 
superficial  observer  to  a  firm  belief  in  *  thought- 
transference  ' ;  and  no  one  could  have  allayed  this 
by  suggesting  that  the  case  was  possibly  referable 
to  *  muscle-reading,'  for  it  quite  certainly  was  not. 
It  only  remains  to  add  that  T.  does  not  recall  hav- 
ing uttered  so  foolish  a  challenge  on  any  other 
occasion ;  and  that,  as  Freudians  will  already  have 
anticipated,  H.  professes  at  the  present  time  to 
have  not  the  slightest  recollection  of  the  episode, 
save  that  there  was  a  dinner  at  the  country-club  at 
which  So-and-so  and  So-and-so  were  present.  And 
lastly,  the  identical  jest  about  Miss  Z.'s  exchanging 
the  abstract  for  the  concrete  turned  up  about  a 
week  later  from  a  third  and  unquestionably  inde- 
pendent source. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES;  AND 
THEIR  INTEGRATION 

The  foregoing  pages  will  have  sufficiently  illus- 
trated, I  trust,  what  Freud  means  by  his  very  com- 
prehensive term  *wish.'  I  have  dwelt  on  it  at 
great  length,  because  it  is  this  *  wish  '  which  trans- 
forms the  principal  doctrines  of  psychology  and 
recasts  the  science ;  much  as  the  *  atomic  theory,' 
and  later  the  *  ionic  theory,'  have  reshaped  earlier 
conceptions  of  chemistry.  This  so-called  *wish' 
becomes  the  unit  of  psychology,  replacing  the  older 
unit  commonly  called  *  sensation  ' ;  which  latter,  it 
is  to  be  noted,  was  a  content  of  consciousness  unit, 
whereas  the  '  wish '  is  a  more  dynamic  affair.  In 
attempting  to  expound  the  change  in  psychology 
which  is  effected  by  this  concept  of  the  *  wish,'  I 
shall  have  to  go  somewhat  beyond  anything  which 
Freud  himself  has  said  or  written,  for  he  has  mainly 
devoted  himself  to  reshaping  the  science  of  psychi- 
atry, abnormal  psychology ;  and  has  not  discussed 

47 


48  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

at  anything  like  so  great  length  the  general  field  of 
normal  mind.  But  I  shall  try  to  limit  myself  to  the 
necessary  implications  of  his  discoveries,  in  the 
field  of  normal  psychology.  And  in  doing  this  I  am 
quite  aware  that  the  rank  and  file  of  psychologists 
to-day  neither  understand  nor  accept,  if  indeed 
they  have  ever  dreamt  of,  these  essential  and,  as  I 
think,  very  illuminating  implications.  It  shall  be 
for  the  reader  to  judge  whether  the  picture  which 
emerges  bears  the  stamp  of  truth. 

Unquestionably  the  mind  is  somehow  *  embodied  ' 
in  the  body.  But  how?  Well,  if  the  unit  of  mind 
and  character  is  a  *wish,'  it  is  easy  enough  to 
perceive  how  it  is  incorporated.  It  is,  this  '  wish,' 
something  which  the  body  as  a  piece  of  mechanism 
can  do:  a  course  of  action  with  regard  to  the  en- 
vironment which  the  machinery  of  the  body  is  ca- 
pable of  carrying  out.*  This  capacity  resides, 
clearly,  in  the  parts  of  which  the  body  consists 

•Here  the  reader  may  raise  the  query — "Carry  out 
without  the  directing  influence  of  an  intelligent  soul?"  To 
this  I  will  ask  the  reader  to  accept  provisionally  the  an- 
swer— ^Yes,  vDxthout.  But  this  merely  because  the  question 
as  raised,  although  familiar,  is  meaningless.  We  are  not 
coming  out  to  a  psychology  without  a  soul,  unless  by  soul 
one  means  '  ghost-soul.'  Quite  on  the  contrary,  Freud's  is 
actually  the  first  psychology  toith  a  soul. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         49 

and  in  the  way  in  which  these  are  put  together ;  not 
so  much  in  the  matter  of  which  the  body  is  com- 
posed, as  in  the  forms  which  this  matter  assumes 
when  organized.  If,  now,  the  wishes  are  the  soul, 
then  we  can  understand  in  all  literalness  Aristotle's 
dictum,  that  the  soul  "  is  the  form  of  a  natural 
body  endowed  with  the  capacity  of  life  " ;  soul  is 
indeed  the  entelechy.  Just  as  the  spirit  of  any 
piece  of  machinery  lies  in  what  it  can  do,  and  this 
specific  capacity  lies  in  its  plan  and  structure 
rather  than  in  the  brute  matter  through  which  this 
plan  is  tangibly  realized,  so  precisely  it  is  with  the 
human  spirit  and  the  human  body.  The  spirit  and 
the  matter  of  the  body  are  two  things :  and  in  the 
case  of  machinery  and  engineering  enterprises  we 
can  plan,  alter,  revise,  estimate,  purchase,  and 
patent  the  spirit,  before  this  is  ever  materially  in- 
corporated. Yet  on  the  other  hand,  the  spirit 
needs  to  be  realized  in  a  tangible  body  before  it 
can  effectively  operate.  In  living  human  beings, 
certainly,  the  spirit  is  embodied. 

In  order  to  look  at  this  more  closely  we  must 
go  a  bit  down  the  evolutionary  series  to  the  fields 
of  biology  and  physiology.  Here  we  find  much 
talk  of  nerves  and  muscles,  sense-organs,  reflex 


50  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

arcs,  stimulation,  and  muscular  response,  and  we 
feel  that  somehow  these  things  do  not  reach  the 
core  of  the  matter,  and  that  they  never  can :  that 
spirit  is  not  nerve  or  muscle,  and  that  intelligent 
conduct,  to  say  nothing  of  conscious  thought,  can 
never  be  reduced  to  reflex  arcs  and  the  like ;  just  as 
a  printing-press  is  not  merely  wheels  and  rollers, 
and  still  less  is  it  chunks  of  iron.  If,  then,  we  in- 
sist on  there  being  a  soul  which  nevertheless  the 
biologist  says  that  he  cannot  discover  anywhere  in 
the  living  tissues  of  the  animal  he  studies,  we  are 
quite  right.  And  the  biologist  has  only  himself 
to  thank  if  he  has  overlooked  a  thing  which  lay  di- 
rectly under  his  nose.  He  has  overlooked  the  form 
of  organization  of  these  his  reflex  arcs,  has  left  out 
of  account  that  step  which  assembles  wheels  and 
rollers  into  a  printing-press,  and  that  which  or- 
ganizes reflex  arcs,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  into 
an  intelligent  conscious  creature.  Evolution  took 
this  important  little  step  of  organization  ages  ago, 
and  thereby  produced  the  rudimentary  *  wish.' 

It  was  a  novelty.  Yet  so  complete  is  the  con- 
tinuity of  evolution,  and  when  we  watch  it  closely 
so  little  critical  are  the  *  critical  points  '  in  any 
process,  that  we  may  overlook  the  advent  of  a  genu- 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         51 

ine  novelty  howsoever  important.  Thus  in  geom- 
etry the  step  is  infinitesimal  between  two  parallel 
lines  and  two  lines  which  meet  in  infinity,*  yet  the 
geometrical  properties  of  the  system  are  astound- 
ingly  different  in  the  two  cases.  Now  in  the  reflex 
arc  a  sense-organ  is  stimulated  and  the  energy  of 
stimulation  is  transformed  into  nervous  energy, 
which  then  passes  along  an  afferent  nerve  to  the 
central  nervous  system,  passes  through  this  and 
out  by  an  efferent  or  motor  nerve  to  a  muscle, 
where  the  energy  is  again  transformed  and  the 
muscle  contracts.  Stimulation  at  one  point  of  the 
animal  organism  produces  contraction  at  another. 
The  principles  of  irritability  and  of  motility  are 
involved,  but  all  further  study  of  this  process  will 
lead  us  only  to  the  physics  and  chemistry  of  the 
energy  transformations :  will  lead  us,  that  is,  in  the 
direction  of  analysis.  If,  however,  we  inquire  in 
what  way  such  reflexes  are  combined  or  '  in- 
tegrated '  into  more  complicated  processes,  we 
shall  be  led  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction,  that 
of  synthesis,  and  here  we  soon  come,  as  is  not  sur- 

*  It  is  of  course  not  true,  though  often  said,  that 
"  parallel  lines  meet  in  infinity " ;  not  true,  that  is,  if 
parallel  lines  are  "  lines  which  are  everywhere  equally  dis- 
tant from  each  other." 


62  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

prising,  to  a  synthetic  novelty.  This  is  specific 
response  or  behavior.  And  the  advent  of  specific 
response  is  a  sufficiently  critical  point  to  merit  de- 
tailed examination,  since  it  is  the  birth  of  aware- 
ness and  therewith  of  psychology  itself. 

In  the  single  reflex  something  is  done  to  a  sense- 
organ  and  the  process  within  the  organ  is  com- 
parable to  the  process  in  any  unstable  substance 
when  foreign  energy  strikes  it;  it  is  strictly  a 
chemical  process ;  and  so  for  the  conducting  nerve ; 
likewise  for  the  contracting  muscle.  It  happens,  as 
a  physiological  fact,  that  in  this  process  stored 
energy  is  released,  so  that  a  reflex  contraction  is 
literally  comparable  to  the  firing  of  a  pistol.  But 
the  reflex  arc  is  not  '  aware '  of  anything,  and  in- 
deed there  is  nothing  more  to  say  about  the  process 
unless  we  should  begin  to  analyze  it.  But  even  two 
such  processes  going  on  together  in  one  organism 
are  a  very  different  matter.  Two  such  processes 
require  two  sense-organs,  two  conduction  paths, 
and  two  muscles :  and  since  we  are  considering  the  re- 
sult of  the  two  in  combination,  the  relative  anatomi- 
cal location  of  these  six  members  is  of  importance. 
For  simplicity  I  will  take  a  hypothetical,  but 
strictly  possible,  case.    A  small  water-animal  has 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         53 

an  eye-spot  located  on  each  side  of  its  anterior  end ; 
each  spot  is  connected  by  a  nerve  with  a  vibratory 
silium  or  fin  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  posterior 
end;  the  thrust  exerted  by  each  fin  is  toward  the 
rear.  If,  now,  light  strikes  one  eye,  say  the  right, 
the  left  fin  is  set  in  motion  and  the  animal's  body 
is  set  rotating  toward  the  right  like  a  rowboat 
with  one  oar.  This  is  all  that  one  such  reflex  arc 
could  do  for  the  animal.  Since,  however,  there  are 
now  two,  when  the  animal  comes  to  be  turned  far 
enough  toward  the  right  so  that  some  of  the  light 
strikes  the  second  eye-spot  (as  will  happen  when 
the  animal  comes  around  facing  the  light),  the 
second  fin,  on  the  right  side,  is  set  in  motion,  and 
the  two  together  propel  the  animal  forward  in  a 
straight  line.  The  direction  of  this  line  will  be  that 
in  which  the  animal  lies  when  its  two  eyes  receive 
equal  amounts  of  light.  In  other  words,  by  the 
combined  operation  of  two  reflexes  the  animal 
swims  toward  the  light,  while  either  reflex  alone 
would  only  have  set  it  spinning  like  a  top.  It  now 
responds  specifically  in  the  direction  of  the  light, 
whereas  before  it  merely  spun  when  lashed. 

As  thus  described,  this  first  dawn  of  behavior 
seems  to  present  nothing  so  very  novel;  it  is  not 


54  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

more  novel  than  the  infinitesimal  touch  that  makes 
two  parallel  lines  meet  somewhere  off  in  infinity. 
The  animal,  it  is  true,  is  still  merely  *  lashed  '  into 
swimming  toward  the  light.  Suppose,  now,  that  it 
possesses  a  third  reflex  arc — a  *  heat-spot '  so  con- 
nected with  the  same  or  other  fins  that  when  stimu- 
lated by  a  certain  intensity  of  heat  it  initiates  a 
nervous  impulse  which  stops  the  forward  propul- 
sion. The  animal  is  still  *  lashed,'  but  nevertheless 
no  light  can  force  it  to  swim  "  blindly  to  its  death  " 
by  scalding.  It  has  the  rudiments  of  *  intelli- 
gence.' But  so  it  had  before.  For  as  soon  as  two 
reflex  arcs  capacitate  it  mechanically  to  swim 
toward  lights  it  was  no  longer  exactly  like  a  pin- 
wheel  :  it  could  respond  specifically  toward  at  least 
one  thing  in  its  environment. 

It  is  this  objective  reference  of  a  process  of 
release  that  is  significant.  The  mere  reflex  does 
not  refer  to  anything  beyond  itself :  if  it  drives  an 
organism  in  a  certain  direction,  it  is  only  as  a 
rocket  ignited  at  random  shoots  off  in  some  direc- 
tion, depending  on  how  it  happened  to  lie.  But 
specific  response  is  not  merely  in  some  random 
direction,  it  is  toward  an  object,  and  if  this  object 
is  moved,  the  responding  organism  changes  its 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         55 

direction  and  still  moves  after  it.  And  the  ob- 
jective reference  is  that  the  organism  is  moving 
•with  reference  to  some  object  or  fact  of  the  en- 
vironment. In  the  pistol  or  the  skyrocket  the 
process  released  depends  wholly  on  factors  inter- 
nal to  the  mechanism  released;  in  the  behaving 
organism  the  process  depends  partly  on  factors 
external  to  the  mechanism.  This  is  a  difference 
of  prime  significance,  for  in  the  first  case,  if  you 
wish  to  understand  all  about  what  the  rocket  is 
doing,  you  have  only  to  look  inside  the  rocket,  at 
the  powder  exploding  there,  the  size  and  shape  of 
the  compartment  in  which  it  is  exploding,  etc. ; 
whereas,  in  order  to  understand  what  the  organism 
is  doing,  you  will  just  miss  the  essential  point  if 
you  look  inside  the  organism.  For  the  organism, 
while  a  very  interesting  mechanism  in  itself,  is  one 
whose  movements  turn  on  objects  outside  of  itself, 
much  as  the  orbit  of  the  earth  turns  upon  the  sun ; 
and  these  external,  and  sometimes  very  distant, 
objects  are  as  much  constituents  of  the  behavior 
process  as  is  the  organism  which  does  the  turning. 
It  is  this  -pivotal  outer  object,  the  object  of  specific 
response,  which  seems  to  me  to  have  been  over- 
neglected. 


56  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

The  case  cited,  in  which  merely  two  reflex  arcs 
enable  an  organism  to  respond  specifically  to  the 
direction  of  a  luminous  object,  is  of  course  an  ex- 
tremely simple  one.  We  have  seen  how  much  the 
addition  of  even  a  third  reflex  arc  can  contribute 
to  the  security  of  the  animal  as  it  navigates  its 
environment,  and  to  the  apparent  intelligence  and 
*  purposiveness  '  of  its  movements.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising, then,  that  in  animals  as  highly  organized 
reflexly  as  are  many  of  the  invertebrates,  even 
though  they  should  possess  no  other  principle  of 
action  than  that  of  specific  response,  the  various 
life-activities  should  present  an  appearance  of  con- 
siderable intelligence.  And  I  believe  that  in  fact 
this  intelligence  is  solely  the  product  of  accumu- 
lated specific  responses.*  Our  present  point  is 
that  the  specific  response  and  the  '  wish,'  as  Freud 
uses  the  term,  are  one  and  the  same  thing. 

This  thing,  in  its  essential  definition,  is  a  course 
of  action  which  the  living  body  executes  or  is  pre- 
pared to  execute  mth  regard  to  some  object  or 

*The  reader  who  is  interested  in  the  development  of 
specific  response  into  intelligence  will  enjoy  the  small 
volume  of  A.  Bethe  ("  Diirfen  wir  den  Ameisen  und  Bienen 
psychische  Qualitaten  zuschreiben ? "  Bonn,  1898),  in  which 
the  author  shows  how  the  life-activities  of  ants  and  bees 
can  be  explained  in  terms  of  reflex  process. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        5T 

some  fact  of  its  environment.  From  this  form  of 
statement  it  becomes  clear,  I  think,  that  not  only  is 
this  the  very  thing  which  we  are  generally  most 
interested  to  discover  about  the  lower  animals — 
what  they  are  doing  or  what  they  are  going  to  do — 
but  also  that  it  is  the  most  significant  thing  about 
human  beings,  ourselves  not  excepted.  "  Ye  shall 
know  them  by  their  fruits,"  and  not  infrequently 
it  is  by  one's  own  fruits  that  one  comes  to  know 
oneself.  It  is  true  that  the  term  '  wish  '  is  rather 
calculated  to  emphasize  the  distinction  between  a 
course  of  action  actually  carried  out  and  one  that 
is  only  entertained  '  in  thought.'  But  this  dis- 
tinction is  really  secondary.  The  essential  thing 
for  both  animal  behavior  and  Freud's  psychology 
is  the  course  of  action,  the  purpose  with  regard  to 
environment,  whether  or  not  the  action  is  overtly 
carried  out. 

In  this  whole  matter  the  introspective  tradition, 
which  has  led  psychology  into  so  many  unfruitful 
by-paths,  is  prepared  to  mislead  us.  We  must  go 
cautiously.  In  the  first  place,  let  us  bear  quite 
clearly  in  mind  that  in  any  living  organism,  human 
or  animal,  we  have  a  very  complicated  mechanism  in 
which  the  property  of  irritability  is  so  united  with 


58  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  power  of  motion  that  in  a  purely  mechanical 
way  the  organism  becomes,  on  proper  stimulation, 
an  engine  that  behaves  in  a  certain  way  with  refer- 
ence to  a  specific  feature  of  its  environment.* 
This  is  what  we  can  safely  conclude  from  merely 
watching  the  doings  of  any  living  creature.  And 
we  behold  invariably  that  every  living  thing  is  in 
every  waking  moment  doing  something  or  other  to 
some  feature  or  other  of  its  environment.  It  is 
going  toward  or  away  from  something,  it  is  dig- 
ging or  climbing,  it  is  hunting  or  eating;  more 
developed  organisms  are  working  or  playing,  read- 
ing, writing,  or  talking,  are  making  money  or 
spending  it,  are  constructing  or  destroying  some- 
thing; and  at  a  still  higher  stage  of  development 
we  find  them  curing  disease,  alleviating  poverty, 
comforting  the  oppressed,  and  promoting  one  or 
another  sort  of  orderliness.  All  these  cases  are 
alike  in  this,  that  the  individual  is  doing  something 
definite  to  some  part  or  other  of  its  environment. 
In  exact  language  its  activity  is  a  "  constant  func- 
tion '*  of  some  feature  of  this  environment.  In  just 
the  same  sense  (although  by  a  different  mechan- 

*I  would  not  for  a  moment  minimize  the  actuality  of 
•thought.'  For  the  moment  we  are  considering  another 
aspect  of  the  matter. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        59 

ism)  as  the  orbit  of  our  earth  is  a  constant  func- 
tion of  the  position  of  the  sun  around  which  it 
swings.  This  constant  function,  involving  always 
the  two  things — living  organism  and  environment 
— is  that  which  constitutes  behavior  and  is  also 
precisely  that  which  Freud  has  called,  with  a  none 
too  happy  choice  of  term,  the  *  wish ' :  as  a  glance  at 
the  illustrations  given  in  Chapter  I  will  show.  And 
we  must  not  forget  that  *  purpose,'  in  any  sense 
you  may  choose  howsoever  intellectual  or  indeed 
moral,  is  precisely  the  same  thing. 

Now,  in  an  organism  which  is  about  to  perform 
overtly  a  course  of  action  with  regard  to  its  en- 
vironment, the  internal  mechanism  is  more  or  less 
completely  set  for  this  performance  beforehand. 
The  purpose  about  to  be  carried  out  is  already  em- 
bodied in  what  we  call  the  *  motor  attitude  '  of  the 
neuro-muscular  apparatus ;  very  much  as  a  musical 
composition  is  embodied  in  a  phonographic  record. 
And  this  is  why  it  is  in  some  respects  irrelevant 
whether  the  individual  actually  carries  out  its  wish, 
or  not.  Something  may  intervene  so  that  the 
mechanism  is  not  finally  touched  off,  the  stimulus 
may  not  be  quite  strong  enough  on  this  occasion, 
etc. ;  but  that  the  individual  ever  developed  such  a 


60  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

set  of  its  mechanism  is  the  important  point.  It 
will  be  touched  off  some  day,  and  even  if  it  is  not, 
its  presence  cannot  fail  to  react  on  other  mech- 
anisms, other  motor  attitudes.  We  blame  a  man 
who  is  prepared  to  tell  a  lie,  nearly  if  not  quite 
as  much  as  one  who  actually  tells  one. 

There  is  indeed  excellent  ground  for  believing 
that  the  one  difference  between  thought  and  will  is 
the  difference  between  a  motor  attitude  prepared 
and  one  that  is  touched  off.  In  other  words,  the 
essential  physiological  condition  for  thought 
(whatever  view  one  may  otherwise  hold  as  to  the 
nature  and  place  of  consciousness)  is  the  lambent 
interplay  of  motor  attitudes,  in  which  some  one 
finally  gains  the  ascendency,  and  goes  over  into 
overt  conduct.  This  is  no  new  doctrine,  since  it  is 
just  this  which  Spinoza  had  in  mind  when  he  de- 
clared that  "  The  will  and  the  intellect  are  one  and 
the  same."  *  Herbert  Spencer  gives  us  a  somewhat 
closer  view  of  this  fact,t  and  modem  psychology 
as  a  whole  has  begun  to  recognize  it,  as  the  remark- 
able tendency  of  otherwise  divergent  schools  toward 

♦"Ethics."  Part  II,  Prop.  XLIX,  Corol.  See  also 
the  Scholium  which  follows. 

t"The  Principles  of  Psychology,"  2d  edition,  VoL  I, 
Part  IV,  Chap.  IX. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        61 

some  form  of  '  motor  theory  of  consciousness ' 
shows.  Thus,  too,  William  James  writes :  "  Be- 
liefs, in  short,  are  rules  for  action ;  and  the  whole 
function  of  thinking  is  but  one  step  in  the  produc- 
tion of  active  habits."  *  And  all  this  is  undoubt- 
edly why  it  is  true  that  as  a  man  thinketh  in  his 
heart,  so  is  he.  For  Freud  these  motor  attitudes 
of  the  body,  whether  they  emerge  in  overt  be- 
havior or  not,  are  the  will  of  the  individual.  And 
the  development  of  character,  in  fact  the  whole 
drama  of  life,  hinges  on  the  development  and 
reciprocal  modification  of  motor  settings,  that  is 
of  purposes  and  wishes  incorporated  in  the 
body.  The  manner  of  this  interaction  is  our 
main  theme,  for  it  has  a  practical  bearing  on 
ethics. 

Remarkably  enough  this  reduces  to  an  extremely 
simple  principle  which  will  be  found  to  underlie 
anything  which  can  be  called  behavior  or  conduct, 
from  the  silent  bending  of  the  sensitive  tip  of  a 
plant's  rootlet  to  the  most  subtly  motivated  act  of 
man.  Darwin  describes,  in  his  book  on  "  The 
Power  of  Movement  in  Plants,"  t  how  the  growing 

•  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience."    1902,  p.  444. 
t  New  York,  1888,  Chap.  XII. 


est  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

tip  of  a  radicle  is  sensitive  to  gravity,  moisture, 
and  light,  and  when  subject  to  one  of  these  influ- 
ences it  transmits  an  impulse  to  an  adjoining  upper 
part  of  the  rootlet  which  then  bends  in  such  a  way 
that  the  tip  is  turned  toward  the  center  of  the 
earth,  or  toward  moisture  or  (in  the  third  case) 
away  from  light.  If  all  three  forces  are  present 
at  once,  the  tip  is  bent  in  that  direction  which  pro- 
vides the  most  moisture  compatible  with  the  great- 
est depth  and  the  least  light.  Here  we  have  a  very 
simple  case  in  which  three  reflexes  combine  to  pro- 
duce one  movement  which  is  a  plain  mechanical  re- 
sultant of  the  movements  which  the  three  reflexes 
would  have  produced  if  each  had  acted  alone. 
They  combine  because  the  three  reflexes  converge 
on  the  same  motile  tissue  that  bends  the  rootlet, 
and  this  contractile  tissue  obeys  as  well  as  it  can 
the  simultaneous  commands  of  all  three  irritable 
centers.  It  is  significant  that  Darwin  concludes 
the  volume  with  these  words  (p.  673):  "It  is 
hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  tip  of  the 
radicle  thus  endowed,  and  having  the  power  of  di- 
recting the  movements  of  the  adjoining  parts,  acts 
like  the  brain  of  one  of  the  lower  animals ;  the  brain 
being  seated  within  the  anterior  end  of  the  body, 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        63 

receiving  impressions  from  the  sense-organs,  and 
directing  the  several  movements." 

In  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life  we  find  likewise 
that  reflexes  combine  to  diminish  (interference)  or 
to  augment  each  other  in  the  response.  H.  S.  Jen- 
nings writes  of  infusorians,*  that  "  under  the 
simultaneous  action  of  the  two  stimuli  the  infuso- 
rian  may  either  react  to  the  more  effective  of  the 
two,  whichever  it  is,  without  regard  to  the  other, 
or  its  behavior  may  be  a  sort  of  compromise  be- 
tween the  usual  results  of  both."  Of  course  in  the 
former  case  the  less  effective  stimulus  is  not  without 
its  effect,  although  this  effect  may  be  largely 
masked  by  the  greater  strength  of  the  other  factor. 
"  If  specimens  showing  the  contact  reaction  [of 
settling  down  on  solid  objects]  are  heated,  it  is 
found  that  they  do  not  react  to  the  heat  until  a 
higher  temperature  has  been  reached  than  that 
necessary  to  cause  a  definite  reaction  in  free  swim- 
ming specimens.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand,  both  heat 
and  cold  interfere  with  this  contact  reaction.  .  .  . 
Specimens  in  contact  with  a  solid  react  less  readily 
to  chemicals  than  do  free  specimens,  so  that  a 

•  "  Behavior  of  the  Lower  Organisms."    New  York,  1906, 
pp.  92-3. 


Q4s  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

higher  concentration  is  required  to  induce  the 
avoiding  reaction."  In  these  ways  the  planarians 
are  found  to  respond  to  specific  temperatures,  de- 
grees of  chemical  concentration,  and  to  specific 
amounts  of  change  in  the  vital  conditions  which 
surround  them.  Always,  stimuli  which  if  given 
separately  would  produce  the  same  response,  aug- 
ment each  other  when  they  are  given  simultane- 
ously; while  stimuli  which  separately  would  pro- 
duce opposed  responses,  interfere  with  or  cancel 
each  other  when  given  together. 

In  the  case  of  such  wonderful  little  creatures  as 
bees  we  see  the  same  principle  extended.  As  we  all 
know,  one  prominent  part  of  the  behavior  of  the 
worker  bee  is  that  it  fares  forth  every  warm  morn- 
ing, visits  the  flowers,  and  returns  laden  with  honey 
to  its  hive ;  to  its  own  hive  and  no  other.  It  does 
this  throughout  the  day.  This  is  no  simple  mode 
of  behavior,  and  we  know  that  it  rests  on  elaborate 
neuro-muscular  mechanisms.  The  bee  is  guided  by 
the  characteristic  odor  of  its  hive,  and  of  the  flow- 
ers, by  the  visible  appearance  of  its  own  hive  and 
of  the  surroundings,  and  by  that  of  the  flowers 
which  it  selects  to  visit,  by  a  sense  of  the  sun's 
warmth,  of  the  state  of  the  atmosphere,  of  the 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        65 

downward  pull  of  gravity  (as  it  flies),  perhaps  by 
some  not  yet  fully  understood  '  sense  of  direction,' 
and  by  many  other  sense-data.  All  these  sensory 
impulses  converging  on  the  motor  apparatus  of  the 
bee's  legs,  wings,  and  proboscis  guide  and  impel 
it  moment  by  moment  through  its  daily  rounds. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe,  as  so  careful  an  ob- 
server as  Bethe  assures  us,  that  any  more  mysteri- 
ous (as,  say,  *  psychic')  factors  than  such  plain 
sensori-motor  reflexes  are  at  any  moment  of  the 
process  involved.  The  fact  is  that  just  as  in  the 
case  of  our  hypothetical  little  creature  (p.  52), 
which  by  two  reflex  arcs  was  enabled  to  swim  toward 
light  and  by  a  third  was  made  to  avoid  too  high  a 
temperature  (a  very  *  purposive '  response),  so  in 
the  case  of  the  bee  several  thousand  reflex  paths  co- 
operating produce  a  behavior  which  both  looks  and 
is  startlingly  '  purposive.'  The  question  arises 
at  once.  Is  this  purposiveness  really  the  result  of 
a  merely  mechanical  interplay  of  reflex  arcs,  or  has 
an  invisible  little  *  soul '  already  crept  into  the 
bee's  *  pineal  gland  '  to  direct  operations  ?  This 
we  shall  have  to  answer  in  no  uncertain  tone:  the 
bee  is  a  purely  reflex  creature.  We  have  seen  pur- 
posiveness arise  from  the  mere  presence  in  one 


66  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

organism  of  three  reflex  arcs,  which  cause  an 
organism  to  seek  light  and  to  avoid  being  scalded ; 
these  are  already  two  purposes.*  In  fact,  as  C.  S. 
Sherrington  has  said,  "  In  light  of  the  Darwinian 
theory  every  reflex  must  be  purposive."  t  And  a 
combination  of  reflexes  is  even  more  markedly  so. 
We  have  then  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Bethe  is 
correct  in  saying  of  so  complicated  an  organism  as 
the  bee,  that  all  its  (so  highly  purposive)  activities 
are  the  work  of  integrated  reflexes. 

I  have  stated  that  the  mechanical  interaction  of 
reflexes  on  one  another  reduces  to  a  very  simple 
principle,  and  before  we  consider  reflex  integra- 
tion in  vertebrates,  it  will  be  well  to  have  this  prin- 
ciple definitely  in  mind.  The  reciprocal  influence 
of  reflexes  can  be  exerted,  of  course,  only  where 
they  come  together,  and  that  is  where  they  con- 
verge on  a  common  motor-organ,  or  on  a  common 
efferent  nerve  leading  out  to  the  motor-organ. 
Now,  as  the  physiologist  Sherrington  says,J  "  each 
receptor   [sense-organ]  stands  in  connection  not 

•"Yes,  but  not  conscious  purposes,"  I  seem  to  hear 
the  reader  say.  This  is  a  point  which  I  shall  take  up  a 
little  further  on. 

t "  The  Integrative  Action  of  the  Nervous  System."  New 
York,  1906,  p.  235. 

JOp.  citat.,  pp.  145-6. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        67 

with  one  efferent  only  but  with  many — perhaps 
with  all,  though  as  to  some  of  these  only  through 
synapses  [nerve  junctions]  of  high  resistance."  It 
is  "  approximately  true  "  that  "  each  final  common 
path  is  in  connection  with  practically  each  one  of 
all  the  receptors  of  the  body."  This  generaliza- 
tion is  made  of  vertebrates,  but  it  is  fairly  certain 
that  a  similar  state  of  things  holds  throughout  the 
animal  and  plant  kingdoms  (for  plants,  also,  have 
sense-organs,  nerves,  and  muscles).  Now  nature 
has  not  found  it  convenient  to  equip  us  with  rotary 
means  of  locomotion,  like  the  propeller  of  a  ship ; 
but  has  provided  that  every  motion  shall  be  made  by 
the  to-and-fro  play  of  a  member — fin,  arm,  or  leg. 
Therefore  the  muscles  exist  in  pairs,  in  each  one  of 
which  one  muscle  moves  the  limb  in  a  direction  op- 
posite to  that  in  which  the  other  muscle  moves  it ; 
that  is,  the  two  muscles  of  a  pair  are  antagonists. 
While  the  nervous  impulse  generated  by  any  stimu- 
lus goes  (or  under  certain  circumstances  can  go)  to 
any  muscle  of  the  body,  the  nervous  paths  are  of 
different  degrees  of  resistance,  so  that  the  main 
force  of  the  impulse  goes  in  certain  few  directions 
rather  than  in  all.  And  one  stimulus  will  effect 
somewhere  a  muscular  contraction :  some  member  of 


68  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  body  is  moved.  But  many  outer  forces  are 
simultaneously  playing  on  the  many  sense-organs 
of  the  body,  and  they  prompt  the  muscles  to  many 
different  motions.  Wherever  these  impulses  con- 
verge to  contract  the  same  muscle,  that  muscle 
contracts  with  all  the  more  force,  and  the  limb 
moves.  But  when  the  sensory  impulses  run  equally 
to  the  antagonistic  muscles  of  a  pair,  the  limb  is 
naturally  unable  to  move  in  opposite  directions  at 
the  same  time.  If  the  two  impulses  are  equal  in 
amount  the  limb  will  not  move  at  all.  Such  im- 
pulses cancel  each  other,  and  do  not  contribute  to 
behavior.  If  we  call  the  sum  of  all  sense  impulses  at 
any  moment  the  *  sensory  pattern,'  we  shall  prac- 
tically always  find  that  some  portions  of  this  pat- 
tern cancel  themselves  out  by  interference,  in  the 
way  described,  while  the  remaining  portions  aug- 
ment one  another  and  produce  the  individual's  overt 
behavior  and  conduct.  The  impulses  of  the  sensory 
pattern  may  be  so  weak  as  to  produce  no  gross 
muscular  contractions,  but  they  will  then  cause 
varying  degrees  of  muscular  tonus ;  and  this  is  that 
play  of  motor  attitude  which  I  have  previously 
mentioned.  It  is  thought.  It  differs  from  overt 
behavior  only  in  the   small  degree  of  muscular 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        69 

action  which  it  involves.  The  one  fundamental 
principle  is  that  no  member  can  move  in  opposed 
directions  at  once,  and  impulses  that  impel  to  this 
efface  each  other.  This  is  very  simple:  the  com- 
plications to  which  it  gives  rise,  both  physiologi- 
cally and  behavioristically,  are  far  from  simple. 

An  interesting  problem  of  a  partially  conflict- 
ing sensory  pattern  is  *  the  Meynert  scheme '  of 
the  child  and  the  candle-flame,  which  has  become 
generally  familiar  owing  to  its  having  been  quoted 
by  James.*  Mejmert  aims  to  show  by  a  diagram 
how  a  child  learns  not  to  put  his  finger  into  a 
candle-flame.  Two  original  reflexes  are  assumed: 
one  in  which  the  visual  image  of  the  candle  causes 
the  child's  finger  to  go  out  to  touch  the  flame ;  the 
other  in  which  the  painful  heat  on  the  finger  causes 
the  child's  arm  to  be  withdrawn.  A  fanciful  series 
of  nerve-paths,  fabricated  in  the  interests  of  the 
*  association  theory,'  purports  to  show  why  after 
once  burning  himself  the  child  will  in  future  put 
out  his  hand,  on  seeing  a  candle,  but  draw  it  back 
again  before  he  burns  himself.  The  explanation 
is  beautifully  accomplished  by  begging  the  whole 

♦The  Principles  of  Psychology."  New  York,  1890, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  24-7. 


70  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

question ;  that  is,  by  resting  the  *  explanation '  on 
certain  time  (and  strength)  relations  between  the 
two  reflexes  of  extension  and  retraction — relations 
which  neither  diagram  nor  text  accounts  for.  In 
fact,  apart  from  the  passage  in  which  the  whole 
question  is  begged,  both  diagram  and  text  show 
that  on  every  subsequent  occasion  the  child  will 
infallibly  put  out  his  hand,  bum  it,  and  then  with- 
draw it,  just  as  he  had  done  the  first  time;  for 
the  reflex  path  for  extending  the  hand  is  the 
shorter  and  the  better  established  of  the  two, 
and  it  remains  entirely  vague  as  to  how  the  im- 
pulse to  withdraw  shall  arrive  in  time  to  save  the 
hand. 

But  Meynert's  explanation  is  not  only  unsuc- 
cessful, it  is  wrong  in  its  intent.  If  achieved,  it 
would  show  that  a  child  once  burned  will  on  merely 
seeing  a  candle,  and  before  it  feels  the  candle's  heat, 
draw  back  its  hand.  And  this,  Meynert  thinks,  is  the 
process  of  learning.  Whereas  in  fact  a  child  that 
shrinks  on  merely  seeing  a  candle  has  not  learned 
anything;  it  has  acquired  a  morbid  fear.  So  far 
from  being  a  step  in  learning,  such  a  reaction  will 
gravely  impede  the  child  in  acquiring  the  use  of 
this  innocent  utensil.    It  is  true  that  one  severe  ex- 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         71 

perience  of  being  burned  can  establish  the  morbid 
cringing  at  the  mere  sight  of  fire,  but  every  teacher 
knows  how  disastrous  this  is  to  a  child's  progress ; 
and  the  mechanism  of  such  a  response  will  not  be 
found  in  any  such  figment  of  the  imagination  as 
that  which  Meynert  adduces.*  I  know  of  nothing 
in  this  *  Meynert  scheme '  that  tallies  with  fact, 
and,  as  James  well  says,  it  is  "  a  mere  scheme  "  and 
"  anything  but  clear  in  detail."  Nothing  but  the 
authority  of  the  association  theory  ever  loaned  it 
plausibility. 

The  normal  process  of  learning  to  deal  with  a 
candle  is  the  process  of  establishing  a  response  to 
an  object  which  is  both  luminous  and  hot,  if  we 
consider  only  the  two  properties  so  far  brought  in 
question.  The  successful  response  will  be  one  which 
is  controlled  directly  by  the  actual  properties  of 
the  candle,  for  this  alone  means  precision  and 
nicety  in  handling  it.  The  normal  child  learns  the 
properties  of  objects,  without  acquiring  a  fear  of 
these  properties ;  for  fear  is  not '  wholesome.'  The 
case  in  hand  is  simple.    The  child  has  in  fact  the 

*  Theodor  MejTiert  was  an  Austrian.  And  in  both 
Austria  and  Germany,  despite  the  eflforts  of  Froebel,  the 
tradition  survives  that  fear  is  a  normal  and  necessary  in- 
gredient of  the  learning  process. 


72  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

two  original  tendencies,  to  put  out  its  hand  to 
touch  any  pretty,  bright  object,  and  to  draw  back 
its  hand  when  the  nerves  of  pain  are  stimulated. 
But  these  are  at  first  not  coordinated;  and  co- 
ordination (learning)  is  the  establishment  of  a  just 
balance  between  the  openness  of  the  two  paths; 
where  *just'  means  proportioned  to  the  actual 
properties  of  the  candle.  On  first  seeing  a  candle 
the  child  puts  out  its  hand ;  the  second  reaction  (of 
withdrawal)  is  touched  off  by  stimulation  of  the 
heat-pain  nerves  in  the  hand,*  and  the  moment  at 
which  this  shall  happen  depends  on  the  sensitive- 
ness of  the  heat-pain  end-organs,  and  the  openness 
of  the  path  connecting  them  with  the  muscles  that 
retract  the  arm ;  of  which  probably  the  openness  of 
path  is  the  modifiable  factor.  The  warmth  of  the 
candle  begins  to  stimulate  this  retraction  reflex, 
and  stimulates  it  more,  and  at  an  increasing  rate  of 
increase,  as  the  hand  approaches  the  candle.  All 
that  is  needed  to  save  the  child  from  burning  its 
hand,  and  this  is  what  Meynert's  scheme  aims  to 
explain,  is  an  openness  of  the  retraction  reflex  path 
sufficient  to  stop  the  hand  before  it  actually  reaches 

•Whether  the  organs  of  heat  and  pain  are  identical  or 
distinct,  the  stimulation  and  sensation,  is  a  single  con- 
tinuous series  running  from  warmth  to  heat  and  pain. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        73 

the  flame.  If  the  act  of  extension  excited  through 
the  eye  is  not  too  impetuous,  the  retraction  reflex 
will  from  the  outset  protect  the  hand;  but  if  the 
former  is  a  very  open  path,  the  advancing  arm  may 
get  a  momentum  which  the  retraction  reflex  will  not 
be  sufficiently  quick  and  strong  to  counterbalance 
in  time  to  save  the  hand  from  being  burned.  A  few 
repetitions  of  the  experience  will  give  this  retrac- 
tion path  an  openness  which  will  safeguard  the 
hand  for  the  future ;  and  this  process  is  aided  by 
the  prolonged  pain  yielded  by  a  burn,  which  con- 
tinues the  retraction  stimulus  for  a  considerable 
period  and  so  *  wears'  down  the  retraction  path 
more  than  a  great  many  merely  momentary  stimuli 
could  do.  In  this  way  a  single  experience  of  burn- 
ing is  often  sufficient  for  all  time.  Thus  experience 
establishes  a  balance  between  the  two  opposed  re- 
flexes, of  extension  and  of  pain  avoidance,  such 
that  the  organism  carries  on  its  further  examina- 
tion of  the  candle  in  safety.  If  it  be  thought  that 
this  balance  will  never  come  about  because  each 
repetition  will  'wear'  the  path  for  extension  as 
much  as  that  for  retraction,  it  must  be  remembered, 
firstly,  that  the  prolonged  pain  stimulation  ap- 
plies only  to  the  latter  path;  and,  secondly,  that 


74  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  opening,  or  '  Bahnung,'  of  reflex  paths  is, 
like  almost  all  processes  in  nature,  a  process  which 
proceeds  most  rapidly  at  first.  It  is  *  asymptotic' 
The  passage  of  a  first  nervous  impulse  over  a  path 
of  high  resistance  *  wears'  it  down  more  than  the 
same  impulse  would  wear  an  already  opened  tract : 
just  as  the  first  five  pedestrians  across  a  snow- 
covered  field  do  more  toward  making  a  path  than 
do  the  next  twenty-five. 

The  explanation  which  I  have  given  does  not  ac- 
count for  aU  varieties  of  the  learning  process,  of 
course,  nor  for  the  child's  *  concept '  of  a  candle. 
But  it  explains,  I  believe,  how  in  point  of  fact  a 
child  learns  not  to  burn  its  hands,  and  this  is  all 
that  the  fantastic  Meynert  scheme  undertakes  to 
do.  The  mechanism  of  learning  is  by  no  means 
understood  as  yet ;  that  is  to  say,  that  the  manner 
in  which  reflex  paths  are  integrated  to  produce  the 
more  complicated  forms  of  behavior  is  still  a  matter 
for  investigation.  Yet  from  the  observation  of 
behavior  itself  certain  important  facts  have  already 
been  made  out.  One  of  these  is  that  the  principle 
of  the  mutual  interference  of  opposed  reflexes  and 
the  mutual  augmentation  of  synenergic  reflexes 
holds    throughout.     This    principle,    indeed,    al- 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        75 

though  it  becomes  endlessly  complicated  and  in 
some  cases  (as  in  the  production  of  reflex  step- 
ping and  other  alternating  movements  by  means 
of  *  reciprocal  innervation ')  is  even  partly  ob- 
scured, seems  to  be  the  one  general  formula  for 
reflex  integration.  This  can  be  seen  in  operation 
in  all  cases  of  behavior  from  the  most  purely  reflex 
to  the  most  highly  '  conscious.'  Thus,  just  as  the 
leaves  of  certain  plants,  which  are  subject  to  the 
two  impulses  of  facing  the  sunlight  but  also  of 
avoiding  desiccating  heat,  will  spread  themselves 
out  broadly  toward  the  sun  in  the  morning  and 
afternoon,  but  in  the  heat  of  noonday  will  par- 
tially fold  up,  so  under  the  teacher's  eye  the  pug- 
nacious impulse  of  the  small  boy  is  subdued  to  the 
furtive  expedient  of  the  spit-ball ;  and  so,  too,  the 
man  who  yearns  for  worldly  power  but  yet  in 
personal  contact  with  his  fellows  is  unconquerably 
timid  will  become  a  renowned  inventor,  or  a 
shrewd  manipulator  of  stock-markets,  or  in  politics 
will  work  into  some  important  position  '  behind  the 
throne.' 

Another  feature  incidental  to  the  integration  of 
reflexes,  which  is  seen  from  the  observation  of  be- 
havior, is  what  I  may  call  the  recession  of  the 


76  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

stimulus.  This  is  a  point  not  insisted  on  by  Freud, 
but  one  which  is  of  vast  importance  to  a  clear 
understanding  of  the  dynamic  psychology  which 
Freud  has  so  immensely  furthered.  The  single 
reflex  is  of  course  always  touched  off  by  some 
stimulus,  and  if  only  reflex  process  is  in  question 
the  immediate  stimulus  is  the  inciting  and  control- 
ling factor.  But  where  even  two  reflexes  are  work- 
ing together  to  produce  specific  response  or  be- 
havior, the  case  is  altered:  the  stimulus  is  now 
merely  an  agent,  a  part  of  a  higher  process.  We 
have  already  seen  this  in  the  case  of  our  water  ani- 
mal which  was  enabled  by  two  eye-spots  and  two 
fins  to  swim  toward  light.  Now  this  light  toward 
which  it  swims  is  not  the  immediate  stimulus,  which 
rather  is  the  light  quanta  which  at  any  moment 
have  entered  the  cells  of  the  eye-spot.  And  one 
could  not  describe  what  the  animal  as  a  whole  is 
doing  in  terms  of  the  immediate  stimuli;  but  this 
can  be  described  only  in  terms  of  the  environing 
objects  toward  which  the  animal's  response  is 
directed.  This  is  precisely  the  distinction  between 
reflex  action  and  specific  response  or  behavior.  As 
the  number  of  component  reflexes  involved  in  re- 
sponse  increases,   the   immediate    stimulus    itself 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         77 

recedes  further  and  further  from  view  as  the  sig- 
nificant factor. 

This  is  very  evident  in  the  case  of  the  bee.  We 
may  grant  with  Bethe  that  the  bee  is  only,  in  the 
last  analysis,  a  reflex  mechanism.  But  it  is  a  very 
complex  one,  and  when  we  are  studying  the  bee's 
behavior  we  are  studying  an  organism  which  by 
means  of  integrated  reflexes  has  become  enabled  to 
respond  specifically  to  the  objects  of  its  environ- 
ment. It  may  be  doubted  whether  Bethe,  or  any 
other  of  the  biologists,  fully  realizes  the  signifi- 
cance of  this ;  fully  realizes,  that  is,  how  com- 
pletely in  behavior  the  stimulus  recedes  from  its 
former  position  of  importance.  To  study  the  be- 
havior of  the  bee  is  of  course  to  put  the  question, 
"  What  is  the  bee  doing?  "  This  is  a  plain  scien- 
tific question.  Yet  if  we  should  put  it  thus  to 
Bethe,  his  answer  would  probably  be :  "  It  is  doing 
of  course  a  great  many  things ;  now  its  visual 
organ  is  stimulated  and  it  darts  toward  a  flower ; 
now  its  olfactory  organ  is  stimulated  and  it  goes 
for  a  moment  to  rub  antennse  with  another  bee  of 
its  own  hive ;  and  so  forth."  But  this  is  not  an  an- 
swer. We  ask,  "  What  is  the  bee  doing?  "  And  we 
are  told,  "  Now  its  visual  .   .   .  and  now  its  olfac- 


78  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

tory,  ..."  etc.,  etc.  With  a  little  persistence  we 
could  probably  get  Bethe  to  say,  "  Why,  the  hee 
isn't  doing  anything."  Whereas  an  unbiased  ob- 
server can  see  plainly  enough  that  "  The  hee  is 
laying  by  honey  in  its  home." 

My  point  is  that  the  often  too  materialistically- 
minded  biologist  is  so  fearful  of  meeting  a  certain 
bogy,  the  *  psychic,'  that  he  hastens  to  analyze 
every  case  of  behavior  into  its  component  reflexes 
without  venturing  first  to  observe  it  as  a  whole. 
In  this  way  he  fails  to  note  the  recession  of  the 
stimulus  and  the  infallibly  objective  reference  of 
behavior.  He  does  not  see  that  in  any  case  of  be- 
havior no  immediate  sense  stimulus  whatsoever  will 
figure  in  a  straightforward  and  exact  description 
of  what  the  creature  is  doing :  and  *  What  ?  '  is  the 
first  question  which  science  puts  to  any  phenom- 
enon. This  was  the  case  even  in  the  first  instance 
which  we  looked  at  (p.  52),  where  two  eye-spots 
and  two  vibratory  cilia  enabled  an  animal  to  swim 
toward  a  light.  It  is  equally  true  in  the  cases  of 
the  rootlet,  and  of  the  planarian  which  responds 
specifically  to  an  amount  of  change,  or  even  a  rate 
of  change.  It  is  a  thousand  times  more  marked  in 
the  case  of  the  bee,  for  here  not  only  would  it  not 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         79 

be  possible  to  describe  what  the  bee  does  in  terms 
of  sensory  stimuli,  but  also  in  much  of  the  bee's 
conduct  it  would  not  be  possible  to  point  out  any 
physical  object  on  which  the  bee's  activities  turn  or 
toward  which  they  are  directed.  It  lays  up  a  store 
of  honey  in  its  home.  If  we  suppose  that  here  the 
parental  hive  is  the  physical  object  around  which 
the  bee's  activities  center,  we  soon  find  ourselves 
wrong,  for  when  the  swarm  migrates  the  bee  knows 
the  old  hive  no  more  but  continues  its  busy  life  of 
hoarding  in  some  other  locality.  The  fact  is  that 
the  specific  object  on  which  the  bee's  activities  are 
focused,  and  of  which  they  are  a  function,  its 
*  home,'  is  a  very  complex  situation,  neither  hive, 
locality,  coworkers,  nor  yet  flowers  and  honey,  but 
a  situation  of  which  all  of  these  are  the  related 
components.  In  short  we  cannot  do  justice  to  the 
case  of  the  bee,  unless  we  admit  that  he  is  the  citizen 
of  a  state,  and  that  this  phrase,  instead  of  being  a 
somewhat  fanciful  metaphor  or  analogy,  is  the 
literal  description  of  what  the  bee  demonstrably  is 
and  does.  Many  biologists  shy  at  such  a  descrip- 
tion; they  believe  that  these  considerations  should 
be  left  to  Vergil  and  to  M.  Maeterlinck,  while  they 
themselves  deem  it  safer  to  deal  with  the  bee's  olf ac- 


80  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

tory  and  visual  organs.  They  will  not  describe  the 
bee's  behavior  as  a  whole,  will  not  observe  what 
mere  reflexes  when  cooperating  integrally  in  one 
organism  can  accomplish,  because  they  fear,  at  bot- 
tom, to  encounter  that  bogy  which  philosophers 
have  set  in  their  way,  the  *  subjective '  or  the 
*  psychic'  They  need  not  be  afraid  of  this,  for 
all  that  they  have  to  do  is  to  describe  in  the 
most  objective  manner  possible  what  the  bee  is 
doing. 

But  our  present  point  is  that  even  two  reflexes 
acting  within  one  organism  bring  it  about  that  the 
organism's  behavior  is  no  longer  describable  in 
terms  of  the  immediate  sensory  stimulus,  but  as  a 
function  of  objects  and  of  situations  in  the  en- 
vironment, and  even  of  such  aspects  of  objects  as 
positions,  directions,  degrees  of  concentration, 
rates  of  change,  etc.  While  as  the  number  of  in- 
tegrated reflexes  increases,  in  the  higher  organisms, 
the  immediate  stimulus  recedes  further  and  further 
from  view,  and  is  utterly  missing  in  an  exact  de- 
scription (merely  that)  of  what  the  organism  does. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that  in  the  description  of 
the  behavior  of  creatures  as  complicated  as  human 
beings  it  has  been  quite  forgotten  that  sensory 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         81 

stimuli  and  reflexes  are  stiU  at  the  bottom  of  it  aU. 
Indeed,  such  a  suggestion  has  only  to  be  made  and 
it  will  be  instantly  repudiated,  especially  by  those 
philosophers  and  psychologists  who  deem  them- 
selves the  accredited  guardians  of  historic  truth. 
In  other  words,  the  study  of  the  integration  of 
reflexes  has  been  so  neglected,  and  it  is  indeed  diflS- 
cult,  that  we  have  come  to  believe  that  an  un- 
fathomable gulf  exists  between  the  single  reflex 
movement  and  the  activities  of  conscious,  thinking 
creatures.  The  gap  in  our  knowledge  is  held  to  be 
a  gap  in  the  continuity  of  nature.  And  yet  if  we 
face  the  matter  frankly,  we  see  that  history,  biog- 
raphy, fiction,  and  the  drama  are  all  descriptions  of 
what  men  do,  of  human  behavior.  We  are  wont  to 
say,  "  Ah,  yes,  but  the  true  interest  of  these  things 
lies  in  what  the  men  are  meanwhile  thinking"  So 
be  it.  But  are  thought  and  behavior  so  toto  caelo 
diff^erent?  And  what  did  Spinoza  mean  by  saying 
that  "  The  will  and  the  intellect  are  one  and  the 
same".''  And,  further,  have  those  who  so  con- 
fidently assert  that  thought  is  a  principle  distinct 
from  integrated  reflex  activity  ever  succeeded  in 
telling  what  *  thought '  is  ?  We  meet  here,  of 
course,  the  profoundest  question  in  psychology, 


82  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

and  the  one  which  for  more  than  a  hundred  years 
has  been  the  central  problem  of  philosophy — ^What 
is  cognition?  Or,  Is  cognition  diflPerent  in  prin- 
ciple from  integrated  reflex  behavior? 

I  must  state  that  Freud  has  never  raised  this 
question  in  so  explicit  a  form.  He  has  also  not 
answered  it.  But  by  discovering  for  us  the  way  in 
which  the  *  thoughts  '  of  men  react  on  one  another, 
in  actual  concrete  fact,  he  has  given  us  the  key  that 
fits  one  of  the  most  ancient  and  most  baffling  of 
locks.  What  I  shall  say  in  the  remainder  of  this 
section  is  confessedly  more  than  Freud  has  said ;  it 
is,  however,  as  I  believe,  the  inevitable  and  almost 
immediate  deduction  from  what  he  has  said.  This 
view  of  mind  as  integrated  reflex  behavior  is  sub- 
versive of  much  that  is  traditional  in  philosophy 
and  psychology,  and  particularly  of  the  dualistic 
dogma  which  holds  that  the  mechanical  and  spirit- 
ual principles,  so  unmistakable  in  our  universe,  are 
utterly  alien  to  each  other,  and  even  largely  incom- 
patible. This  newer  view,  however,  instead  of  being 
subversive,  is  unexpectedly  and  categorically  con- 
firmatory of  certain  ancient  doctrines  of  morals 
and  of  freedom: — verities  which  have  been  well- 
nigh    forgotten    in    a    so-called    '  scientific '    age. 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         83 

Let  us  consider,  then,  the  higher  forms  of  behavior, 
in  human  beings,  and  the  question  of  consciousness 
and  thought.* 

If  one  sees  a  man  enter  a  railway  station,  pur- 
chase a  ticket,  and  then  pass  out  and  climb  on  to  a 
train,  one  feels  that  it  is  clear  enough  what  the 
man  is  doing,  but  it  would  be  far  more  interesting 
to  know  what  he  is  thinking.  One  sees  clearly  that 
he  is  taking  a  train,  but  one  cannot  see  his  thoughts 
or  his  intentions  and  these  contain  the  '  secret '  of 
his  actions.  And  thus  we  come  to  say  that  the 
conscious  or  subjective  is  a  peculiar  realm,  private 
to  the  individual,  and  open  only  to  his  introspec- 
tion. It  is  apart  from  the  world  of  objective  fact. 
Suppose,  now,  one  were  to  apply  the  same  line  of 
reasoning  to  an  event  of  inanimate  nature.  At 
dawn  the  sun  rises  above  the  eastern  ridge  of  hills. 
This  is  the  plain  fact,  and  it  is  not  of  itself  too 
interesting.  But  what  is  the  *  secret '  behind 
such  an  occurrence.'*  "Why  this  is,  as  everybody 
knows,  that  the  sun  is  the  god  Helios  who  every 

•This  new  theory  of  cognition  can  of  course  be  treated 
here  only  in  outline.  I  have  written  further  of  it  under  the 
title  of  "  Response  and  Cognition "  in  The  Journal  of 
Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  1915,  Vol. 
XII,  pp.  365-372;  393-409.  The  article  is  reprinted  as  a 
Supplement  to  this  book. 


84  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

morning  drives  his  chariot  up  out  of  the  East,  and 
he  has  some  magnificent  purpose  in  mind.  We  can- 
not tell  just  what  it  is  because  his  thoughts  and 
purposes  are  subjective  and  not  open  to  our  ob- 
servation. We  suspect,  however,  that  he  is  paying 
court  to  Ceres,  and  so  cheers  on  by  his  presence  the 
growing  crops."  Or  again,  the  same  line  of  rea- 
soning as  used  in  a  somewhat  later  age.  The 
stream  flows  through  the  field,  leaps  the  waterfall, 
and  goes  foaming  onward  down  the  valley.  The 
fact  is  that  it  has  always  done  so.  And  the  secret? 
"  Well,  they  used  to  say  that  the  stream  was  a 
daughter  of  Neptune  and  that  she  was  hurrying 
past  to  join  her  father.  We  know  better  than  that 
now ;  we  know  that  water  always  seeks  its  own  level, 
and  the  only  secret  about  it  is  that  the  water  is 
urged  on  from  behind  by  an  impulse  which  some  call 
the  vis  viva.  We've  never  seen  this  vis  viva,  for  it  is 
invisible;  but  it  is  the  secret  of  all  inanimate  mo- 
tion ;  and  of  course  it  must  be  there,  for  otherwise 
nothing  would  move." 

It  has  taken  man  ages  to  learn  that  the  gaps  in 
his  knowledge  of  observed  fact  cannot  be  filled  by 
creatures  of  the  imagination.  It  is  the  most 
precious  achievement  of  the  physical  sciences  that 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         85 

the  *  secrets  behind  '  phenomena  lie  in  the  phe- 
nomena and  are  to  be  found  out  by  observing  the 
phenomena  and  in  no  other  way.  The  '  mental ' 
sciences  have  yet  to  learn  this  lesson.  Continued 
observation  of  the  rising  and  setting  sun  revealed 
that  the  secret  behind  was  not  the  gallantry  of 
Helios,  but  the  rotation  of  our  earth  which,  by  sim- 
ple geometry,  caused  the  sun  relatively  to  our- 
selves to  rise  in  the  East.  Continued  observation 
of  water  showed  that  neither  a  nature  god  nor  yet 
a  vis  viva  is  the  secret  behind  the  flowing  stream ; 
but  that  the  stream  is  flowing  as  directly  as  the 
surface  of  the  earth  permits,  toward  the  center  of 
the  earth.  And  that  this  is  merely  a  special  in- 
stance of  the  fact  that  all  masses  move  toward  one 
another.  There  is  indeed  a  mystery  behind  such 
motion,  but  science  calls  this  mystery  neither 
Helios,  Neptune,  nor  vis  viva,  but  simply  motion ; 
and  science  will  penetrate  this  mystery  by  more 
extended  observation  of  motion.  Now  the  inscrut- 
able '  thought  behind  '  the  actions  of  a  man,  which 
is  the  invisible  secret  of  those  actions,  is  another 
myth,  like  the  myths  of  the  nature  gods  and  the 
vis  viva.  Not  that  there  are  not  actual  thoughts, 
but  tradition  has  turned  thought  into  a  myth  by 


g5  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

utterly  misconceiving  it  and  locating  in  the  wrong 
place. 

On  seeing  the  man  purchase  a  ticket  at  the  rail- 
way station,  we  felt  that  there  was  more  behind 
this  action,  *  thoughts '  that  were  the  invisible 
secret  of  his  movements.  Suppose,  instead,  we  in- 
quire whether  the  more  is  not  ahead.  More  is  to 
come;  let  us  watch  the  man  further.  He  enters 
the  train,  which  carries  him  to  a  city.  There  he 
proceeds  to  an  oflBce,  on  the  door  of  which  we  read 
*  Real  Estate.'  Several  other  men  are  in  this 
office;  a  document  is  produced;  our  man  takes  a 
sum  of  money  from  his  pocket  and  gives  this  to 
one  of  the  other  men,  and  this  man  with  some  of  the 
others  signs  the  document.  This  they  give  to  our 
man,  and  with  it  a  bunch  of  keys.  All  shake  hands, 
and  the  man  whom  we  are  watching  departs.  He 
goes  to  the  railway  station  and  takes  another  train, 
which  carries  him  to  the  town  where  we  first  saw 
him.  He  walks  through  several  streets,  stops  be- 
fore an  empty  house,  takes  out  his  bunch  of  keys, 
and  makes  his  way  into  the  house.  Not  long  after- 
wards several  vans  drive  up  in  front,  and  the  men 
outside  proceed  to  take  household  furniture  off  the 
vans  and  into  the  house.    Our  man  inside  indicates 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         87 

where  each  piece  is  to  be  placed.  He  later  gives  the 
men  from  the  vans  money. 

All  this  we  get  by  observing  what  the  man  does, 
and  without  in  any  way  appealing  to  the  '  secret ' 
thoughts  of  the  man.  If  we  wish  to  know  more  of 
what  he  is  doing  we  have  only  to  observe  him  more. 
Suppose,  however,  that  we  had  appealed  to  his 
inner  thoughts  to  discover  the  *  secret '  of  his 
movements,  when  we  first  saw  him  buying  a  ticket 
at  the  railway  station.  We  approach  him  and  say, 
"  Sir,  I  am  a  philosopher  and  extremely  anxious  to 
know  what  you  are  doing,  and  of  course  I  cannot 
learn  that  unless  you  will  tell  me  what  you  are 
thinking."  "  Thinking?  "  he  may  reply,  if  he  con- 
dones our  guileless  impertinence.  "  Why,  I  am 
thinking  that  it's  a  plaguey  hot  day,  and  I  wish  I 
had  made  my  morning  bath  five  degrees  colder,  and 
drunk  less  of  that  hot-wash  that  my  wife  calls  in- 
stant coffee."  "  Was  that  all.?  "  "  Yes,  that  was 
all  until  I  counted  my  change;  and  then  I  heard 
the  train  whistle. — Here  it  is.  Good-by !  And 
good  luck  to  your  philosophy !  " 

Thought  is  often  a  mere  irrelevance,  a  surface 
embroidery  on  action.  What  is  more  important, 
the  very  best  that  the  man  could  have  told  us  would 


88  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

have  been  no  better  than  what  we  have  learned  by 
watching  the  man.  At  best  he  could  have  told  us, 
« I  am  intending  to  buy  a  house  and  to  get  my 
furniture  in  to-day  " ;  exactly  what  we  have  ob- 
served. And  if  he  told  us  his  further  intentions, 
these  in  turn  could  be  as  completely  learned  by 
watching  his  movements ;  and  more  reliably,  since 
men  do  both  think  and  speak  lies. 

Freud  makes,  however,  the  further  point  that 
thought,  that  is,  conscious  thought,  is  so  little  com- 
plete as  to  be  scarcely  any  index  to  a  man's  char- 
acter or  deeds.  This  is  Freud's  doctrine  of  the 
unconscious;  although  Freud  is  by  no  means  the 
first  to  discover  or  to  emphasize  the  unconscious. 
A  man's  conscious  thoughts,  feelings,  and  desires 
are  determined  by  unconscious  thoughts  or 
*  wishes  '  which  lie  far  deeper  down,  and  which  the 
upper,  conscious  man  knows  nothing  of.  I  have  il- 
lustrated this  doctrine  at  length  in  the  first  part  of 
this  volume.  In  fact,  conscious  thought  is  merely 
the  surface  foam  of  a  sea  where  the  real  currents 
are  well  beneath  the  surface.  It  is  an  error,  then, 
to  suppose  that  the  *  secret  behind  '  a  man's  actions 
lies  in  those  thoughts  which  he  (and  he  alone)  can 
'  introspectively  survey.'     We  shall  presently  see 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        89 

that  it  is  an  error  to  contrast  thought  with  action 
at  all. 

But  what  are  we  to  do  when  '  thought '  has  re- 
ceded to  so  impregnable  a  hiding-place?  We  are 
to  admit,  I  think,  that  we  have  misunderstood  the 
nature  of  thought,  and  predicated  so  much  that 
is  untrue  of  it,  that  what  we  have  come  to  call 
*  thought '  is  a  pure  myth.  We  are  to  say  with 
William  James :  *  "  I  believe  that  *  consciousness,' 
when  once  it  has  evaporated  to  this  estate  of  pure 
diaphaneity,  is  on  the  point  of  disappearing  alto- 
gether. It  is  the  name  of  a  nonentity,  and  has  no 
right  to  a  place  among  first  principles.  Those  who 
still  cling  to  it  are  clinging  to  a  mere  echo,  the 
faint  rumor  left  behind  by  the  disappearing  *  soul  * 
upon  the  air  of  philosophy."  This  is  the  key- 
note of  his  Radical  Empiricism,  the  principle  that 
of  all  those  which  he  enunciated  was  dearest  to  him ; 
and  it  is  his  final  repudiation  of  dualism.  With 
this  we  return  to  the  facts. 

It  is  just  one  error  which  has  prevented  us  from 
seeing  that  the  study  of  what  men  do,  i.e.,  how 
they  '  behave,'  comprises  the  entire  field  of  psy- 

* "  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism."  New  York,  1912, 
p.  2. 


90  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

chology.  And  that  is  the  failure  to  distinguish 
essence  from  accident.  If  one  holds  out  one's  hand 
and  lets  fall  a  rubber  ball,  it  moves  down  past  the 
various  parts  of  one's  person  and  strikes  the  floor ; 
now  it  is  opposite  one's  breast,  now  at  the  level  of 
the  table-top,  now  at  the  level  of  the  chair-seat, 
and  now  it  rests  on  the  floor.  This,  we  say,  is  what 
the  ball  does,  and  all  this  is  as  true  as  it  is  irrele- 
vant. For  if  the  same  ball  had  been  dropped  by 
some  other  means  from  the  same  point  it  would  have 
fallen  in  just  the  same  way  if  neither  oneself,  nor 
the  table,  nor  the  chair  had  been  there.  It  was 
all  accident  that  it  fell  past  one's  breast  and  past 
the  table ;  accident  even  that  it  hit  the  floor,  for  had 
there  been  no  floor  there  it  would  have  continued  to 
fall.  What  the  ball  is  essentially  doing,  although 
it  took  science  a  long  time  to  find  this  out,  is  mov- 
ing toward  the  center  of  the  earth;  and  in  this  lies 
significance,  for  if  the  earth's  mass  were  displaced 
or  abolished,  the  motion  of  the  ball  would  indeed 
be  concomitantly  displaced  or  abolished.  Mathe- 
matics and  science  conveniently  designate  that 
which  is  thus  essential  in  any  process  as  *  function.' 
It  is  accident  that  the  ball  moves  parallel  to  the 
table-leg,  for  essentially  the  movement  of  the  ball 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        91 

is  a  function  of  the  earth's  center.  This  is  what 
the  ball  is  really  *  doing.*  We  have  adumbrated 
this  same  fact  in  connection  with  the  bee.  It  is  in 
the  present  respect  accidental  that  the  bee  sips  at 
this  flower,  or  that ;  pluck  them  aside  and  the  bee 
will  turn  as  well  to  other  flowers.  What  is,  how- 
ever, not  accidental  is  that  the  bee  is  laying  up 
honey  in  its  home;  for  the  bee's  life-activities  are 
a  function  of  its  home, — and  home  is  a  compli- 
cated but  purely  objective  state  of  things.  All 
this  is  but  a  different  aspect  of  that  which  I  have 
called  the  recession  of  the  stimulus ;  the  latter  giv- 
ing place,  as  reflexes  become  more  and  more  in- 
tegrated, to  objects  and  to  relations  between  ob- 
jects as  that  of  which  the  total  body-activity  is  a 
function. 

Now  it  is  the  same  case  with  the  man  whom  we 
saw  buying  a  railway  ticket.  What  he  is  thinking 
at  the  moment  is  likely  to  be  a  most  irrelevant  gloss 
on  what  he  is  actually  doing,  and  will  be  far  from 
being  the  '  secret '  of  his  movements.  At  the  very 
most  favorable  moment  his  thought  can  do  no  more 
than  reveal  to  us  what  he  is  doing ;  for  notoriously 
introspection  gives  us  no  clew  as  to  how  we  achieve 
even   the  least  voluntary   movement.      Therefore 


92  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

what  the  man  is  doing  is  the  sole  question  to  be  con- 
sidered. But  on  the  other  hand,  while  it  is  true 
that  the  man  is  buying  a  ticket  it  is  only  a  subordi- 
nate and  insignificant  matter,  for  essentially  the 
man  is  purchasing  a  house,  and  this  latter  state- 
ment shows  us  that  of  which  the  man's  total  be- 
havior is  a  true  function.  The  purchase  of  a  rail- 
way ticket  is  as  accidental  to  this  process  as  a 
body's  striking  the  floor  is  irrelevant  to  the  law 
of  gravitation;  and  if  there  were  no  railway  in 
existence  the  man  would  purchase  his  house,  and 
go  to  secure  his  deed  by  stage-coach,  chaise,  or  on 
his  legs.  Just  as  the  stimulus  recedes,  so  the  com- 
ponent activities  recede  from  their  primary  posi- 
tion in  the  total  process,  as  integration  advances. 
Both  stimulus  and  component  process  are  there  and 
are  necessary,  but  they  are  only  parts  of  a  larger 
whole. 

These  considerations  make  it  clear,  I  trust,  why 
the  dualistic  philosophical  view,  which  contrasts 
physical  motion  with  a  secret,  inscrutable,  *  psychi- 
cal '  process  *  behind,'  is  mischievous.*  It  totally 
ignores  the  work  of  integration,  and  to  assuage 

•  The  view  which  I  am  outlining  has,  per  contra,  noth- 
ing to  do  with  'materialism,'  as  I  have  shown  at  length 
in  "The  Concept  of  Consciousness." 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         93 

this  ignorance  it  fabricates  a  myth.  With  that 
view  falls  also  the  entire  subject  of  *  psycho- 
physical parallelism ' ;  which  was  a  complete  mis- 
apprehension from  the  outset.  It  is  not  that  we 
have  two  contrasted  worlds,  the  *  objective '  and 
the  *  subjective  ' ;  there  is  but  one  world,  the  objec- 
tive, and  that  which  we  have  hitherto  not  under- 
stood, have  dubbed  therefore  the  *  subjective,'  are 
the  subtler  workings  of  integrated  objective 
mechanisms. 

The  same  considerations  give  light  on  another, 
though  cognate,  issue.  The  man  who  buys  a  ticket 
is  said  to  do  so  in  the  interest  of  some  *  end  '  which 
he  has  in  mind.  In  this  way  action  is,  again,  con- 
trasted (as  the  *  means  ')  with  the  mental  secret  of 
action  (the  '  end  ').  This  is  an  unfortunate  way  of 
looking  at  the  matter,  since  in  reality,  as  I  have 
tried  to  show,  that  which  is  so  contrasted  with  the 
subordinate  action  ('  means  '),  and  is  said  to  be  a 
mentally  entertained  *  end  '  and  quite  different  in 
nature  from  the  means,  is  after  all  precisely  an- 
other action — the  purchase  of  a  home.  It  is  not 
true  that  we  do  something  in  order  to  attain  a  dead 
and  static  '  end  ' ;  we  do  something  as  the  neecssary 
but  subordinate  moment  in  the  doing  of  something 


94  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

more  comprehensive.  The  true  comparison  then 
is  not  between  deed  or  means  and  thought  or  end, 
but  between  part  deed  and  whole  deed.  This  is  of 
importance,  and  we  shall  consider  it  again ;  but  I 
will  point  out,  in  passing,  that  without  this  fallacy 
of  '  ends  '  we  should  never  have  been  afflicted  with 
that  fantastic  whimsy  called  *  hedonistic  ethics  * ; 
which,  I  incline  to  think,  is  responsible  for  much  of 
modern  deviltry. 

We  return  now  to  the  main  line  of  our  argument. 
It  is  clear  that  this  function  which  behavior  or 
conduct  is  of  the  external  situation  is  the  very 
same  thing  which  Freud  deals  with  under  the  name 
of  *  wish.'  It  is  a  course  of  action  which  the  body 
takes  or  is  prepared  (by  motor  set)  to  take  with 
reference  to  objects,  relations,  or  events  in  the 
environment.  The  prophetic  quality  of  thought 
which  makes  it  seem  that  thought  is  the  hidden  and 
inner  secret  of  conduct  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
thought  is  the  preceding  labile  interplay  of  motor 
settings  which  goes  on  almost  constantly,  and  which 
differs  from  overt  conduct  in  that  the  energy  in- 
volved is  too  small  to  produce  gross  bodily  move- 
ments.   This  is  a  piece  of  nature's  economy. 

Now  in  this  wish  or  function  we  have  the  pure 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES         95 

essence  of  human  will,  and  of  the  soul  itself.  No 
distinction  can  be  found  between  function,  wish, 
and  purpose;  in  every  case  we  are  dealing  with  a 
dynamic  relation  between  the  individual's  living 
body,  as  subject  of  the  relation  (or  mathematically 
speaking  the  *  dependent  variable  '),  and  some  en- 
vironmental fact,  as  object  of  the  relation  (or 
'independent  variable').  The  mechanism  of  the 
body  incorporates  the  wish  or  purpose.  And 
this  view  gives  a  concrete  meaning  to  Aris- 
totle's dictum  that  the  soul  is  the  *  form '  or 
"  entelechy  of  a  natural  body  endowed  with  the 
capacity  of  life."  *  The  living  body  through  a 
long  process  of  organization  has  come  at  length 
to  *  embody  '  purpose.  But  the  soul  is  of  course 
always  and  forever  the  purpose  that  is  embodied, 
and  not  the  mere  matter  (Aristotle's  *  potential- 
ity ')  that  as  a  mechanism  embodies.  The  distinc- 
tion is  the  same  as  that  between  the  design  which 
an  inventor  patents  and  the  steel  and  brass  in 
which  the  plan  is  tangibly  realized. 

Such  a  view  of  the  soul  departs  widely  from  the 
academic  dogmas  of  the  present  day  and  from 
popular    psychology;    and    it   has    the   apparent 

*"De  Anima,"  412a. 


9a  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

novelty  that  any  restatement  of  the  views  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle  must  have  in  an  age  which  has  for- 
gotten the  classics.  One  or  two  further  deviations 
from  current  psychological  notions  must  be  briefly 
mentioned.  The  first  and  most  important  is  in 
regard  to  *  consciousness.'  This  actually  figures 
in  all  modem  discussions  as  a  substance  which,  con- 
trasted with  the  substance  of  matter,  is  that  of 
which  sensations,  ideas,  and  thoughts  are  com- 
posed: the  ego,  mind,  and  soul  are  thought  to  be 
made  of  it,  it  is  the  '  subjective '  essence,  and  the 
question  of  cognition  is  concerned  with  the  rela- 
tions between  consciousness  and  matter.  In  the 
view  now  before  us,  consciousness  and  *  the  sub- 
jective as  such '  are  done  away  with.  Conscious- 
ness is  not  a  substance  but  a  relation — the  relation 
between  the  living  organism  and  the  environment  to 
which  it  specifically  responds  ;  of  which  its  behavior 
is  found  to  be  this  or  that  constant  function ;  or, 
in  other  words,  to  which  its  purposes  refer.  This 
is  the  relation  of  awareness,  and  the  cognitive  rela- 
tion. There  will  be  no  consciousness  except  in  a 
situation  where  60^^  living  organism  and  environ- 
ment are  present  and  where  the  functional  relation 
already  described  exists  between  them.    It  has  al- 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES        97 

ways  been  admitted  that  cognition  involves  a 
knower  and  a  known,  and  if  we  look  for  these  in 
this  situation,  we  see  at  once  that  the  body  is  the 
knower,  and  the  environing  objects  responded  to 
are  the  known.  In  short,  those  objects  or  aspects 
toward  which  we  respond,  of  which  our  purposes 
are  functions — these  are  the  *  contents  of  con- 
sciousness.' And  these  immediately,  not  some  pale 
*  representations  '  thereof.  This  is  a  return  to  the 
obvious  fact  that  what  a  man  knows  are  the  actual 
things  around  him,  the  objects  and  events  with 
which  he  has  to  deal ;  it  is  a  return  also  to  Aristotle, 
who  said,  "  Actual  knowledge  is  identical  with  its 
object " ;  *  and  again,  "  The  mind  is  the  thing  when 
actually  thinking  it."  f  Here  it  is  of  secondary 
importance  whether  there  is  overt  and  grossly  vis- 
ible conduct  or  only  the  less  energetic  play  of  motor 
setting  and  attitude,  for  the  two  are  equally  de- 
scribable  only  as  functions  of  something  in  the  out- 
side situation ;  and  that  about  which  a  man  thinks 
is  clearly,  even  for  introspection,  numerically  iden- 
tical with  that  upon  which  his  actions  turn,  and 
with  that  which,  when  he  comes  near  enough,  he 
sees  and  handles. 

*  "  De  Anima,"  431a.  t  Ibidem,  4316. 


98  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

Thought  is,  however,  more  than  the  object 
thought  about:  there  is  active  thinking  about  the 
objects.  If  we  look  once  more  at  the  least  manifold 
in  which  cognition  occurs — a  living  organism  in, 
and  responsive  to,  an  environment — ^we  see  that  this 
further  active  element  is  the  active  play  of  motor 
attitude,  which  eventually  resolves  itself  into  the 
less  labile  but  more  forceful  phenomenon,  conduct. 
Thus  thought  is  latent  course  of  action  with  regard 
to  environment  (i.e.,  is  motor  setting),  or  a  proces- 
sion of  such  attitudes.  But  we  have  already  found 
that  will  is  also  course  of  action  with  regard  to 
environment,  so  that  the  only  difference  between 
thought  and  volition  is  one  of  the  intensity  of 
nerve  impulse  that  plays  through  the  sensori-motor 
arcs — a  difference  of  minimal  importance  for  either 
psychology  or  ethics.  From  this  appears  the  literal 
truth  of  Spinoza's  dictum  that  "  The  will  and  the 
intellect  are  one  and  the  same  " ;  a  saying  that  is 
verifiable  on  many  sides,  and  one  which  early  moral- 
ists recognize  in  such  maxims  as,  "  As  a  man  think- 
eth  in  his  heart,  so  is  he  " ;  but  one  which,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  made  unintelligible  in  the  scheme  of 
the  mind  offered  by  current  psychology. 

The  scheme  that  I  have  been  suggesting  could  be 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  WISHES  99 

elucidated  and  fortified  by  the  consideration  of 
attention,  memory,  emotion,  illusions,  and  the  other 
phenomena  studied  by  psychology.  But  I  have  dis- 
cussed these  at  some  length  elsewhere,*  and  enough 
has  been  said,  I  think,  to  show  what  sort  of  a 
dynamic  theory  of  will  and  cognition  Freud's  doc- 
trine of  the  *  wish,'  as  I  believe,  implies.  We  have 
seen  that  the  wish  is  purpose  embodied  in  the 
mechanism  of  a  living  organism,  that  it  is  neces- 
sarily a  wish  about,  or  a  purpose  regarding,  some 
feature  of  the  environment ;  so  that  a  total  situa- 
tion comprising  both  organism  and  erwironment  is 
always  involved.  We  have  seen  that  will,  thought, 
and  the  object  of  knowledge  are  all  integral  and 
inseparable  parts  of  this  total  situation.  Insepa- 
rable because,  if  organism  and  environment  are 
sundered,  the  cognitive  relation  is  dissolved,  and 
merely  matter  remains ;  precisely  as  only  water  re- 
mains when  a  rainbow  is  pulled  apart.  Mind  is  a 
relation  and  not  a  substance. 

*  "  Response  and  Cognition."  The  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods.  1915,  Vol.  XII,  pp. 
365-3T2;  393-409.     Cf.  Supplement. 

"  The  Concept  of  Consciousness."  George  Allen  and 
Macmillan,  1914. 

"The  Place  of  Illusory  Experience  in  a  Realistic  World." 
An  essay  in  "  The  New  Realism."    Macmillan,  1912. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS 

If  the  wish  or  purpose  is,  so  to  say,  the  unit  of 
conduct,  it  is  clear  that  ethics  ought  to  take  the 
wish  as  its  fundamental  unit  of  discourse,  whatso- 
ever its  further  argument  is  to  be  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  good  or  the  source  of  moral  sanction.  But 
*  wish '  is  here  as  unfortunate  a  word  as  Freud 
could  have  chosen,  since  it  seems  to  signify  desire 
for  or  interest  in  some  *  end.'  I  have  tried  to  show 
that  an  analysis  of  Freud's  wish  implies  nothing 
of  the  sort ;  that  the  wish  is  a  purpose  or  course  of 
action  with  regard  to  the  environment  and  that  it 
contemplates  no  end  whatsoever,  just  as  time  itself 
infers  no  end.  The  only  semblance  of  *  end '  is 
found  where  one  purpose  is  yoked  into  the  service 
of  another  purpose,  and  here  the  latter  might 
roughly  be  called  the  *  end '  of  the  former ;  yet 
only  roughly  and  inexactly  so,  since  the  whole  is 
process  and  the  subordinate  purposes  are  only 
its  articulate  phases.  Avoiding  this  misapprehen- 
100 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  101 

sion  we  have  to  see  whether  conduct,  which  is 
compounded  of  such  purposes,  has  ethical  signifi- 
cance. 

An  innate  tendency  or  purpose  of  an  infant  is  to 
put  out  its  hand  to  touch  fire.  If  the  mother  is  by, 
she  holds  back  the  hand  {her  purpose)  before  it 
reaches  the  flame.  There  is  a  hint  for  the  child, 
here,  of  right  and  wrong.  If  the  mother  guards  the 
child  unremittingly,  and  every  time  restrains  the 
hand  before  the  uncomfortable  warmth  begins  to 
stimulate  the  child's  own  tendency  to  withdraw,  the 
child  will  never  be  burned  and  may  eventually  (in  a 
way  to  be  described)  acquire  the  habit  of  stopping 
short  before  reaching  the  flame.  But  this  cautious 
conduct  will  not  be  guided  by  (be  a  function  of)  the 
heat  of  the  flame,  for  the  child  has  had  no  experi- 
ence of  this.  The  child's  general  conduct  toward 
fire  will  then  be  partly  a  function  of  the  immediate 
properties  of  fire  (its  color,  position,  shape,  etc.)  ; 
but  partly  also  of  a  something  else  (really  its 
mother),  which  may  or  may  not  figure  explicitly 
in  the  child's  field  of  consciousness.  The  mother 
has  set  a  barrier  between  the  child  and  a  portion 
of  reality;  and  forever  after  the  child  will  be  in 
some  measure  impeded  in  its  deahngs  with  fire.    An 


102  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

inhibition  of  which  the  source  or  sanction  is  thus 
not  intrinsic  is  precisely,  I  suppose,  a  tabu. 

Or  again,  if  an  equally  unremitting  mother  lets 
the  child  put  out  its  hand  toward  the  flame  and 
takes  care  only  that  the  hand  by  too  great  momen- 
tum or  an  accidental  lurch  does  not  actually  come 
into  the  flame,  the  child  will  not  be  burned  and 
its  own  mechanism  of  withdrawal  will  be  exercised 
not  through  the  mother's  interference  but  through 
the  direct  action  of  the  flame's  heat.  The  child's 
conduct  toward  fire  becomes  integrated,  and  is 
solely  a  function  of  the  actual  properties  of  fire. 
Ten  years  later  you  shall  hear  the  first  mother 
shouting,  "  Bobbie,  don't  you  dare  put  your  hand 
so  near  the  lamp,  and  if  you  touch  those  matches 
again  your  father  will  whip  you."  And  the  second 
mother  will  be  saying,  "  Bobbie,  go  get  the  matches 
now  and  light  the  lamp,  and  set  it  down  on  the 
center-table." 

Here  the  reader  may  feel  that  I  egregiously  beg 
the  question  by  a  couple  of  cheap  improvisations. 
Let  us  see :  for  here  we  come  to  the  most  essential 
point  in  Freud.  The  first  mother  has  pushed  back 
the  child's  hand  before  the  child's  own  mechanism 
of  withdrawal  was  stimulated  (by  the  heat).    The 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  103 

child  is  frustrated,  but  not  instructed ;  and  it  is  in 
the  situation  where,  later  on  in  life,  we  say  to  our- 
selves, "  If  at  first  you  don't  succeed,  try,  try 
again ! "  The  child  tries  and  tries  again,  and 
mother  is  kept  busy.  This  eifectively  exercises  the 
child's  tendency  to  move  toward  the  flame,  and 
leaves  undeveloped  its  equally  inborn  tendency  to 
withdraw  from  heat.  In  short,  the  mother  is  actu- 
ally ingraining  the  very  tendency  which  she  wishes 
to  curb.  Why,  then,  does  her  method  seem  to  her 
to  produce  caution  in  the  child.?  Because  if  she 
perseveres  for  a  year  or  so  (as  she  will),  the  child 
matures  and  can  respond  to  a  more  complicated 
situation,  which  is  flame-and-mother  in  constella- 
tion. This  conjunction  it  directly  experiences,  and 
it  learns  that  when  mother  is  around  it  can't  touch 
fire.  Unfortunately,  however,  this  is  for  him  an 
intrinsic  property  of  mother,  and  not  of  fire. 
There  is  the  evil.  Yet  this  is  a  genuine  quality  of 
the  mother,  and  the  child  learns  this  without  tabu, 
so  that  when  mother  and  flame  are  together  it 
perceives  the  situation  where  flame  cannot  be 
touched.  And  now,  if  the  mother  has  not  suc- 
cumbed to  worry  meanwhile,  she  is  gratified  at  hav- 
ing *  taught '  the  child  caution.    In  reality  she  has 


104,  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

done  only  this: — she  has  deepened  by  habit  the 
tendency  to  reach  out  toward  flame,  has  left  unex- 
ercised the  conservative  tendency  to  withdraw  from 
heat,  has  waited  for  the  child  to  grow  up  sufficiently 
to  learn  that  the  non-touchability  of  flame  is  a 
property  of  herself,  has  worried  herself  into  a  nag- 
ging mother,  and  has  prematurely  got  the  child  to 
respond  to  herself  as  an  object  of  the  environment, 
with  qualities  of  her  own  and  needing  suitably  to  be 
studied  and  dealt  with.  What  is  worst  of  all,  if 
she  is  spared  to  continue  her  misguided  watchful- 
ness until  the  youth's  plastic  period  is  passed,  he 
will  have  such  an  insatiable  tendency  to  play  with 
fire,  in  her  absence,  that  no  amount  of  actual  bums 
will  ever  correct  it. 

All  this  is  a  paradigm  of  Freudian  morals.  In 
order  to  introduce  some  convenient  terms,  I  will 
put  the  matter  more  technically.  The  mother's 
hand  that  stays  the  child's  hand  before  the  child's 
innate  tendency  to  withdraw  from  heat  has  been 
stimulated  is  a  barrier  between  the  child  and  the 
flame.  To  this  barrier,  the  mother's  hand,  the 
child  has  already  acquired  various  modes  of  re- 
sponse ;  it  now  acquires  another,  to  draw  back  from 
the   mother's  hand-in-front-of-flame,   just    as    it 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  105 

learns  to  halt  before  a  high  fence.  The  mother's 
hand  *  suppresses  '  the  child's  innate  tendency  to 
touch  the  fire.  But  the  child's  withdrawal  becomes 
a  withdrawal  from  the  mother's  hand  and  not,  as  it 
ought  to  be,  a  response  to  (or  function  of)  the 
flame  itself.  Freud,  like  others  before  him,  calls 
this  *  dissociation  ';  The  precautionary  response 
which  should  be  '  associated  '  with  fire  is  dissociated 
therefrom,  and  transferred  to  something  else;  in 
our  case  to  the  mother.  Take  this  mother  away, 
and  the  child  knows  no  caution  with  regard  to  fire. 
All  responses  to  the  mother  become  integrated  into 
a  group  or  *  complex,''  and  those  toward  flame  into 
another  complex.  The  two  complexes  are  not  en- 
tirely out  of  relation  to  each  other,  yet  each  has 
more  internal  cohesiveness  than  it  has  cohesion  with 
the  other  complex.  Between  the  two  there  is  rela- 
tive dissociation.  We  are  to  bear  in  mind  that  the 
same  innate  tendency  to  "  touch  the  pretty  flame  " 
remains,  and  has  been  strengthened  by  the  child's 
trying  over  and  over  to  touch  it,  simply  because 
the  mother  prevented  the  child  from  learning  on 
its  very  f.rst  trial  that  flame  is  painfully  hot.  And 
let  us  note  also  that  if  there  is  any  question  here 
of  right  and  wrong  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  child 


106  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

it  rests  solely  on  the  fact  that  fire  burns;  and 
further,  that  the  misguided  mother  has  undertaken 
to  arrogate  to  herself  this  bit  of  what  should  be  her 
child's  experience,  to  transfer  the  role  of  truth  to 
her  own  person.    She  has  not  trusted  the  truth. 

The  other  mother  was  equally  tender,  and  far 
wiser.  She  saw  to  it  that  no  accidental  lurch  or  fall 
brought  her  child's  hand  into  the  flame.  But  she 
let  the  child  follow  its  own  bent  of  reaching  toward 
the  flame  until  its  own  other  tendency  to  avoid  heat 
was  stimulated  and  exercised  by  the  direct  fact  of 
heat  in  the  flame.  Her  child  will  not  be  actually 
burned  any  more  than  the  other.  By  thus  trust- 
ing the  truth  it  takes  about  two  days  to  establish 
in  a  normal  child  cautious  conduct  with  regard  to 
fife.  A  normal  child  of  the  same  age  can  in  about 
two  years'  time  be  taught  that  you  are  always  an 
obstacle  between  it  and  fire,  and  that  fire  is  not  hot. 
For  the  injudicious  mother  has  in  deed  told  this  lie 
to  the  child.  The  wise  mother,  furthermore,  has 
not  put  herself  in  the  position  of  an  alien  force 
frustrating  the  child ;  and  certainly  it  is  desirable 
that  for  several  years  at  least  a  child  should  not 
have  its  attention  directly  drawn  to  either  mother 
or  father  as  an  object  more  distinct  from  itself 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  107 

than  its  own  arms  or  legs.  Non-frustration  is  the 
condition  for  sympathy:  frustration,  obviously, 
for  antipathy.  The  parent  must  decide  whether  he 
ever  wishes  to  dissolve  the  sympathy  between  him- 
self and  a  child. 

We  have  now  to  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the 
workings  of  suppression.  At  the  age  of  ten  our 
boy  has  too  freely  partaken  of  doughnuts  and  is 
going  through  the  motions  appropriate  to  stomach- 
ache. He  has  not  done  *  wrong,'  but  is  merely  get- 
ting experience  of  a  new  object.  The  doughnuts 
are  like  the  fire  of  his  earlier  days,  except  that  their 
noxiousness  is  deferred,  and  not,  like  a  bum,  im- 
mediate ;  and  that  it  depends  on  the  quantity  par- 
taken of.  It  will  take  longer  than  before  to  estab- 
lish suitable  behavior  in  the  presence  of  doughnuts. 
In  time,  however,  this  would  establish  itself  with- 
out outside  interference.  A  new  element  in  this 
situation  is  what  we  may  call  appetite.  Since  the 
organism  requires  for  its  continuance  certain 
things  from  the  environment,  nature  has  estab- 
lished a  mechanism  such  that  the  absence  of  these 
requisites  acts  as  an  internal  stimulus,  and  the 
whole  organism  is  caused  to  move  restlessly  about 
until  the  missing  ingredient  chances  to  impinge  on 


108  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

a  sense-organ  of  the  animal,  and  is  forthwith  ap- 
propriated. Thus  if  there  is  too  little  oxygen  in 
the  surrounding  medium,  it  necessarily  comes  about 
that  there  is  too  high  a  percentage  of  carbon 
dioxide  in  the  animal's  blood  and  this  acts  as  a 
specific  internal  stimulus  firstly  to  speed  up  the 
activities  of  heart  and  lungs,  and  secondly  to  irri- 
tate the  nervous  system  generally,  thus  setting  the 
animal  into  restless  motion.  As  development  pro- 
ceeds and  specific  responses  are  established  to  vari- 
ous elements  of  the  environment,  these  responses 
become  integrated  with  the  internal  deficit  stimuli, 
and  the  general  nervous  irritation  is  drawn  into 
specific  motor  channels :  the  general  motor  restless- 
ness becomes  a  specific  course  of  action.  And  when 
this  point  is  reached  we  say  that  the  animal "  knows 
what  it  wants."  There  are  two  elemental  appetites, 
the  nutritive  (including  that  for  oxygen)  and  the 
sexual;  possibly  more.  Now  in  connection  with 
appetites  it  is  perfectly  just  to  speak  of  *  desire ' 
and  *  end  ';  but  this  must  not  lead  us  to  forget  that 
the  special  conduct  determined  by  appetite  remains, 
equally  with  all  other  conduct,  a  function  of  en- 
mronment;  still  less  should  this  case  mislead  us,  as 
I  believe  the  majority  of  writers  on  ethics  have 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  109 

been  misled,  into  believing  that  desire  and  end  re- 
veal the  general  pattern  of  human  will.  This  would 
be,  I  must  insist,  to  mistake  an  important  yet  only 
special  case  for  the  general  law.  The  above  makes 
clear,  I  trust,  how  *  desire '  is  defined  without  re- 
course to  subjective  categories,  and  how  *  desire  ' 
for  *  ends  '  arises  through  mechanical  integration. 
And  our  ten-year-old  has  an  appetite  for  dough- 
nuts. We  will  say  that  his  first  feast  with  its  at- 
tendant penalty  occurred  through  a  parental  over- 
sight, and  that  the  subsequent  parental  injunctions 
coincided  so  exactly  with  the  course  of  moderation 
already  impressed,  and  through  painful  hours  con- 
tinuously deepened,  by  the  lad's  digestive  appa- 
ratus, that  the  doughnut  question  never  arose 
again.  But  five  years  later  he  encounters  tobacco. 
Here  the  disastrous  consequences  (in  part  stunted 
growth)  are  so  serious,  so  deferred,  and  so  irre- 
mediable that  the  boy  can  by  no  means  be  allowed 
to  make  the  trial  for  himself.  A  question  of  morals 
is  going  to  arise ;  and  let  us  again  be  quite  clear  at 
the  outset  that,  whatever  complications  may  come 
up,  the  ultimate  sanction  for  the  *  right '  course  of 
action  in  this  regard  will  be  nothing  but  the  fact 
that  tobacco  does  injure  growing  lads.    The  father 


110  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

explains  to  the  boy  the  injurious  action  of  tobacco, 
and  that  therefore  it  will  be  *  not  right '  for  him 
to  use  tobacco  until  he  has  attained  his  full  growth ; 
after  which  time  the  effect  of  tobacco  will  be  some- 
what different  and  the  lad  will  then  decide  the  mat- 
ter for  himself.  Here  I  assume  the  effective  use  of 
written  and  spoken  *  signs.'  The  mechanism  of 
signs  is  as  yet  but  little  understood,  and  it  is  not 
a  thing  to  be  merely  speculated  on.  What  is  cer- 
tain is  that  in  the  course  of  integration  outer  ob- 
jects come  to  be  responded  to  by  specific  gestures 
and  modulations  of  the  voice — responses  which 
have  a  purely  social  significance;  that  these  re- 
sponses become  somehow  integrated  with  the  other, 
more  practical,  responses  to  the  same  objects,  re- 
spectively ;  and  that,  as  a  result,  such  signs  uttered 
by  one  person  and  perceived  by  another  serve  to 
touch  off,  or  indeed  to  organize,  the  same  responses 
in  the  second  person  as  would  have  been  touched  off 
or  organized  in  the  latter  if  he  had  had  the  same 
experience  with  the  objects  signified  as  the  first 
person  has  had.  It  is  a  marvelous  function  and 
one  that  is  susceptible  of  grave  derangements. 

The  situation  before  us  needs  analysis.     In  the 
first  place,  tobacco  appeals  to  no  authentic  appetite 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  111 

of  the  boy,  in  the  sense  above  described.  But  it  is 
an  object  of  the  environment,  and  at  the  stage  of 
development  now  in  question  it  evokes  complicated 
specific  responses  of  a  sort  which  we  somewhat 
loosely  call  curiosity  and  imitation.  I  believe  that 
it  cannot  be  said  with  certainty  whether  such  re- 
sponses do  or  do  not  derive  additional  impetus  from 
the  basic  appetites.  In  any  case  it  will  be  not  far 
wrong  to  consider  the  tendency  of  a  boy  to  investi- 
gate the  possibilities  of  tobacco  and  to  imitate  the 
use  which  others  make  of  it,  as  being  like  the  tend- 
ency which  he  possessed  as  a  baby  to  put  out  his 
hand  toward  fire.  After  the  talk  with  his  father 
two  tendencies  in  the  boy  are  stimulated :  on  the  one 
hand  are  the  former  tendencies  of  curiosity  and 
imitation ;  and  on  the  other,  his  father's  words  *'  to- 
bacco will  injure  you  "  and  "  it  is  not  right  for  you 
to  use  it."  (I  pass  over  the  possibility  that  the 
father  has  said,  "  I  will  punish  you  if  you  touch 
tobacco  " ;  for  this  would  reduce  the  case  to  pre- 
cisely the  type  already  considered,  in  which  a 
mother  undertook  by  force  to  restrain  her  child 
from  experiencing  the  properties  of  fire. )  The  boy 
now  faces  a  dilemma;  and  clearly  a  moral  problem. 
It  is  possible  to  view  this  as  an  issue  between 


lift  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

*  abstract '  right  and  wrong,  that  is,  to  view  the 
moral  sanction  involved  as  in  some  manner  cate- 
gorical. This  would  be,  I  think,  to  commit  the 
fallacy  of  over-abstraction;  and  one  notes  that 
the  systems  of  ethics  which  posit  an  abstract  sanc- 
tion for  right  conduct,  never  discover  what  *  right ' 
is.  In  this  way,  pathetically  enough,  the  upshot  of 
academic  ethics  is  merely  a  very  learned  interroga- 
tion point.  We  shall  revert  to  this  matter  of 
morals  von  oben  herab.  In  any  case  such  an  ab- 
stract position  would  not  be  the  Freudian ;  and  the 
inferable  Freudian  ethics  is  distinctly  one  von 
unten  hinauf;  as  follows. 

If  the  boy  has  hitherto  found  in  his  father  a 
truth-telling  man,  the  father's  talk  will  have  con- 
veyed to  the  boy,  not  a  *  father  says,*  but  a  *  to- 
bacco is  *  (injurious).  This  item  will  then  take  its 
place  as  an  integral  part  of  the  complex  named 
tobacco.  Language  will  have  served  its  proper 
task,  and  there  will  be  no  dissociation,  or  transfer 
of  *  injuriousness  '  from  *  tobacco  '  to  *  father.' 
The  boy  may  still  dabble  with  tobacco,  but  the  first 
step  at  least  is  accomplished.  And  this  step  is  in- 
dispensable, for  if  the  lad  is  to  benefit  by  the  experi- 
ence of  others  rather  than  experience  the  bitter 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  113 

truth  for  himself,  there  must  be  some  source  of  in- 
formation which  shall  be  to  the  boy  fact  and  not 
mere  asseveration.  This  source  should  be  pre- 
eminently the  father  and  mother.  Now  Freud  has 
shown,  in  an  essay  *  which  all  parents  might  well 
read,  that  children  are  very  early  and  very  keenly 
cognizant  of  untruthfulness  in  their  elders.  This 
is  not  astonishing,  although  very  generally  ignored ; 
for  beyond  question  even  dogs  and  cats  distinguish 
between  truthfulness  and  untruthfulness  of  deed 
(and  sometimes  even  of  word).  Freud  also  shows 
that  one  untruthful  word  of  father  or  mother  will 
often  undermine  the  child's  confidence  forever,  and 
he  urges  on  parents  the  necessity  of  quite  unquali- 
fied truthfulness.  I  have  talked  with  many  parents 
of  young  children  and  have  found  but  few  who  trust 
the  truth  suflBciently  to  deem  it  practicable  with 
children.  But  parents  need  not  waste  breath  to 
dub  the  truth  '  sacred,'  when  they  themselves  do  not 
trust  it ;  and  such  parents  have  only  themselves  to 
thank  when,  in  order  to  secure  obedience,  they  have 
to   resort  to   cajoleries,  threats,  whipping-posts, 

*  "  Zur  sexuellen  Aufklarung  der  Kinder,"  in  "  Sammlung 
kleiner  Schriften  zur  Neurosenlehre,"  2te  Folge.  Deuticke, 
Leipzig,  1909,  S.  151. 


114  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

and  such  superstitions  as  *  abstract  Right."  A  little 
concrete  Tightness  in  the  parent  will  go  much  fur- 
ther.* If,  now,  Bobbie's  father  is  a  truthful  man, 
the  next  step  will  follow;  if  not,  Bobbie  will  get 
elsewhere  such  information  as  he  can,  and  the  next 
step  will  still  follow.  This  I  prefer  to  describe, 
however,  on  the  assumption  that  the  father  is 
known  by  his  son  to  be  a  truth-teller.  And  let  us 
not  forget  that  a  truth-telling  father,  like  a  hypo- 
critical father,  is  as  much  an  object  of  the  child's 
environment  as  a  thermometer,  a  clock,  a  seismo- 

•Such  pious  perjury  as  the  following,  for  instance,  will 
never  do.  In  regard  to  the  instruction  of  children  in  mat- 
ters of  sex,  one  may  read  in  a  recent  book — "  a  full  in- 
sight into  the  psychology  of  sex  is  highly  dangerous. 
Surely  the  boy  should  know  only  part  of  the  facts! 
Surely  it  is  permissible  to  lead  him  to  believe  that  all 
women  are  more  or  less  as  we  would  have  them  be  in  an 
ideal  world,  and  to  allow  men  to  appear  to  him  as  rather 
better  in  these  respects  than  they  actually  are !  The  tree  of 
knowledge  cannot  be  robbed  of  its  dangers,"  etc.  (William 
McDougall:  "An  Introduction  to  Social  Psychology,"  8th 
edition.  Methuen,  London,  1914,  pp.  420-421.)  And  then 
we  wonder  why  our  little  lambs  do  not  graze  guilelessly 
beneath  this  parental  Tree  of  Deliberate  Misinformation; 
why  Bobbie  consults  street  gamins  on  many  matters  rather 
than  his  father;  and  why  Bobbie  soon  says  to  himself, 
"  Surely  it  is  permissible  to  lead  father  to  believe  that  I 
am  rather  better  than  I  actually  am,  in  fact  that  I  am 
just  as  he  would  have  me  be  in  an  ideal  world! "  Freud,  at 
least,  earnestly  deplores  such  treachery  in  parents.  A  diet 
of  untruth  does  not  equip  a  child  for  the  realities  of  life. 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  115 

graph,  or  an  encyclopedia.  And  specific  modes  of 
response  toward  him  are  established  by  the  same 
integrative  mechanism. 

The  next  step  is  more  interesting  than  the  first. 
The  boy  now  faces  a  dilemma,  to  smoke  or  not  to 
smoke;  a  dilemma  that  is  comparable  with  the 
baby's,  to  touch  or  not  to  touch  fire  after  having 
once  felt  its  heat,  for  the  function  of  language  is 
such  that  the  father's  truthful  words  are  in  a  meas- 
ure the  equivalent  of  an  unpleasant  experience  with 
tobacco.  But  in  this  case  the  hindrance  has  not 
quite  the  positive  and  immediate  urgency  of  heat- 
pain,  and  the  second  step  enjoys  a  corresponding 
latitude.  Now  tobacco,  in  itself  purely,  appeals  to 
no  innate  appetite,  and  I  think  it  can  be  confidently 
asserted  that  the  truthful  father's  warning  will  be 
sufficient  to  check  the  boy's  passing  whim  of  imita- 
tion, unless  this  latter  is  reenforced  by  other 
tendencies  of  a  more  intrinsic  potency. 

And  it  very  possibly  is  so  reenforced.  For  to- 
bacco, like  long  trousers,  figures  in  the  parapher- 
nalia of  adults,  and  '  to  act  grown-up '  is  a  very 
common  boyish  wish,  or  mode  of  behavior.  This 
wish  is  one  component  of  a  large  complex  of  inter- 
related responsive  settings,  the  *  ego  complex,'  or, 


116  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

as  Shand,  McDougall,  and  Prince  prefer  to  say,  the 
*  self-regarding  sentiment.'  It  is  apt  to  have  such 
variant  forms  and  associates  as  the  wish  to  be  inde- 
pendent, *  to  do  as  I  Hke '  (of  which  the  exaggerated 
form  is  the  general  wish  to  disobey),  to  go  with  big 
boys,  to  be  a  sea-captain,  cowboy,  or  pirate.  Now 
these,  which  with  their  like  are  all  that  lend  charm 
to  tobacco  as  an  implement  of  boyhood,  are  all  the 
clear  outgrowths  of  the  still  earlier  wish  to  *  run 
away '  from  home,  so  often  seen  in  children  of  ten 
and  less.  This  in  turn  is  no  innate  tendency  and 
must  derive  its  impetus  from  somewhere.  It  does, 
and  from  just  such  sources  as  that  which  I  first 
mentioned — an  injudicious  mother  (or  father) 
undertaking  to  be  a  fence  between  the  child  and 
its  little  bauble  of  flame.  The  cautious  reaction 
was  then  secured  toward  flame-plus-mother;  but 
the  innate  tendency  to  reach  out  toward  flame 
(which  in  turn  gets  its  energy  from  the  flame 
stimulus  direct)  was  not  modified,  as  it  would  have 
been  if  the  mother  had  trusted  the  simple  truth 
that  flame  is  hot.  She  wished  to  teach  the  child  to 
avoid  flame ;  what  she  did  teach  it  was  to  avoid  her 
(as  being  the  impediment,  which  the  flame  itself 
ought  to  have  been,  to  its  innate  tendency).    This 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  117 

and  similar  misdirections  on  the  parents'  part  soon 
produce  a  child  that  toddles  off  down  the  street  in 
the  aim  of  running  away  from  home,  and  that 
later,  in  the  desire  to  act  grown-up  and  independ- 
ent, assembles  a  gang  of  street  gamins  behind  the 
barn  to  smoke  cigarettes  and  gulp  down  poison 
from  a  whisky-bottle.  For  these  children  have  been 
taught  that  fire  does  not  burn.  But  all  this  must 
not  be,  and  so  the  father  finds  himself  *  forced  '  to 
get  a  rawhide  whip ;  with  which  he  adds  fear  to  the 
already  existing  tendencies  which  make  the  child 
wish  to  act  and  to  be  '  grown-up  '  and  forever  away 
from  parental  restraints.  When  such  motor  set- 
tings are  once  established  in  a  child,  almost  every 
object  in  the  environment  tends  to  stimulate  them 
to  action ;  and  so  the  nervous  paths  of  disobedience 
are  amply  energized.  Tobacco  is  notably  such  an 
object. 

All  this  is  to  say  that  in  our  boy  whose  parents 
have  all  along  trusted  the  truth,  the  second  step 
of  which  I  spoke  will  be  very  simple,  because  the 
tendency  or  *  temptation  '  to  the  precocious  use  of 
tobacco  (to  be  prematurely  grown-up)  was  in  this 
boy  not  fed  from  any  considerable  or  regular 
source  of  energy.    I  believe  that  this  is  true.    At 


118  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

least  I  have  seen  it  to  be  true  in  several  cases ;  that 
'  is  to  say,  in  one  hundred  per  cent,  of  the  fearlessly 
honest  parents  whom  I  have  been  able  to  discover. 
In  these  cases  the  children,  so  far  from  wishing  to 
anticipate  their  departure  from  the  parental  roof, 
have  evinced  a  wistful  though  unvoiced  regret  when 
the  time  for  this  came.  It  appears  that  where  hon- 
esty prevails  in  the  home,  kindness,  too,  can  be 
trusted  to  make  her  fixed  abode.  Nor  have  the 
children  wished  to  dabble  with  tobacco.  The  case 
just  considered  illustrates  the  way  in  which,  as 
Freud  so  emphatically  declares,  the  difficulties  of 
later  life  derive  from  suppressions  and  dissocia- 
tions established  in  earliest  childhood. 

This  second  step,  the  resolution  of  a  dilemma  be- 
tween courses  of  action,  is  not  always  so  simple, 
and  I  wish  to  pass  at  once  to  a  typical  instance, 
which  reveals,  I  believe,  at  one  stroke  how  the  will, 
the  intellect,  and  the  moral  sense  develop ;  the  very 
pattern  of  the  articulate  integration  of  the  soul.  * 
A  young  woman  goes  from  a  rural  and  pious 
home  to  a  great  city,  there  to  earn  her  living.    She 

•The  case  of  tobacco  is  not  the  one  which  I  should  like 
to  call  typical.  Although  not  particularly  apposite  to  my 
ultimate  purpose,  I  chose  it  to  illustrate  a  knotty  and  not 
uncommon  special  type  of  moral  problem. 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  119 

makes  the  acquaintance  of  other  young  wage-earn- 
ers, differently  reared,  who  participate  eagerly  and 
thoughtlessly  in  the  light-hearted  amusements  of 
the  town.  They  go  often  to  the  theater.  Our 
young  woman  has  been  taught  at  home  that  the 
theater  is  a  place  of  all  abominations,  and  from 
the  conversation  of  her  new  acquaintances  she 
judges  that  to  some  extent  at  least  the  parental 
opinion  is  well-founded.  Shall  she  now  adopt  the 
practice  of  going  to  the  theater  ?  This  is  a  legiti- 
mate and  serious  dilemma,  because  sound  and  in- 
sistent wishes  make  both  for  going  and  for  not 
going.  On  the  one  hand  are  the  proper  curiosity 
of  youth  to  see  life,  the  love  of  companionship  and 
gayety,  the  need  for  relaxation ;  on  the  other  hand 
are  the  precepts  of  loving  and  trusted  parents  and 
of  their  religion,  a  sound  prejudice  against 
unbridled  frivolity,  and  a  normal  shrinking 
from  the  moral  contamination  which  the  young 
woman  sees  is  at  work  in  her  wage-earning 
friends. 

We  are  fairly  familiar  with  three  ways  in  which 
persons  behave  when  they  meet  such  a  dilemma.  One 
way  is  to  resist  the  present  *  temptations,'  which 
means  to  suppress  the  wish  for  companionship  and 


120  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

pleasure,  to  renounce  the  *  tree  of  knowledge'; 
eventually  to  drift  away  from  social  connections, 
and  into  a  warped,  acidulous,  and  (as  Freud  finds) 
nervously  diseased  spinsterhood.  A  second  way  is 
to  *  forget '  (i.e.,  to  suppress)  the  righteous  pre- 
cepts learned  at  home,  to  indulge  unthinkingly  in 
every  *  pleasure '  offered,  to  become  the  butterfly 
and  the  riotous  pleasure-lover;  which  means  even- 
tually to  drop  into  any  and  every  form  of  abandon- 
ment, and  to  die  a  drunken  prostitute.  I  state  ex- 
treme cases ;  that  is,  cases  in  which  the  suppression 
persists.  For  as  long  as  the  suppression  is  there, 
the  person  is  bound  to  move  in  the  direction  indi- 
cated. These  two  ways  are  equivalent  in  point  of 
badness.  In  both  cases  the  suppressed  wishes  in- 
evitably burst  forth  in  furtive  side-channels  of 
conduct.  The  ascetic  '  hates  '  the  "  evils  of  this 
wicked  world,"  despises  and  rankles  over  the  frail- 
ties of  his  fellow-men,  is  seized  by  spasmodic  im- 
pulses to  kick  over  the  traces  himself,  and  is 
steadily  obsessed  by  licentious  thoughts.  The 
abandoned  pleasure-lover,  similarly,  has  fits  of 
*  remorse  '  and  the  haunting  prick  of  *  conscience,' 
becomes  maudlin  and  weepy  at  mention  of  *  home 
and  mother,'  asseverates  with  suspicious  vehemence 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  121 

his  having  "  always  tried  to  do  right,"  and  calls  for 
drink  to  allay  his  mental  agony.  When  drunkest 
he  babbles  o'  green  fields,  and  blubbers,  "  See  that 
my  grave's  kept  green." 

A  third  way  is  no  better.  It  is  the  way  of  those 
who  undertake  to  follow  both  of  two  conflicting 
courses ;  in  the  present  instance,  to  observe  both 
the  church-going  traditions  of  home  and  the 
morally  relaxed  habits  of  town.  A  person  in  this 
frame  of  mind  will  sometimes  go  to  his  clerical 
adviser  with  the  proposal — "  I'll  go  to  all  the  serv- 
ices, take  an  active  part  in  church  work  on  Sunday, 
and  contribute  money,  if  you  will  agree  that 
through  the  week  I  shall  do  anything  I  like."  This 
is,  of  course,  the  path  of  *  compromise '  in  the 
most  reprehensible  sense  of  the  word,  and  the  direct 
route  to  all  the  vilest  forms  of  hypocrisy.  A  pro- 
gressive dissociation  of  the  character  is  established, 
and  the  person  becomes  two  persons,  one  pious  and 
one  pleasure-loving;  an  enigmatical  character  is 
produced,  given  to  the  most  contradictory  courses, 
restless,  self-impeded,  and  at  every  point  of  social 
contact  undependable.  The  case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde  is  an  extreme  but  not  an  overdrawn  in- 
stance.    This   third  way  of  meeting  a  dilemma 


12J8  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

resembles  the  other  two  in  that  dissociation  takes 
place,  and  differs  only  in  that  neither  branch  of 
the  character  gains  any  considerable  ascendency 
over  the  other.  In  the  first  two  cases  there  is  steady 
suppression  of  one  set  of  tendencies,  and  a  steady 
escape  of  these  through  furtive  by-paths  of 
thought  and  action ;  while  in  the  third,  each  set  of 
tendencies  suffers  alternate  suppression.  In  none 
of  the  three  cases  is  the  victim  able  to  do  any  one 
thing  with  his  whole  heart ;  a  part  of  his  strength 
has  always  to  be  spent  in  suppressing  dissociated 
and  antagonistic  tendencies. 

But  there  is  a  fourth  way  of  meeting  a  dilemma, 
a  way  that  involves  integration  and  not  dissocia- 
tion nor  yet  suppression.  Oddly  enough  it  is  not 
distinguished  by  superficial  observers  from  the  third 
way.  It  consists  in  a  free  play  of  both  the  in- 
volved sets  of  tendencies,  whereby  they  meet  each 
other,  and  a  line  of  conduct  emerges  which  is  dic- 
tated by  both  sets  of  motives  together,  and  which 
embodies  all  that  was  not  downright  antagonistic  in 
the  two.  This  sounds  like  compromise,  whereas  its 
mechanism  is  utterly  different.  And  it  were  best 
called  reconciliation  or  resolution.  We  return  to 
our  illustration  of  the  young  woman  coming  from 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  123 

a  pious  home  to  a  great  city.  She  is  invited  by  a 
young  man  to  go  to  a  play.  We  have  seen  how  in 
the  interest  of  home  piety  she  may  suppress  her 
natural  curiosity  and  love  of  friends,  and  say 
"  No  " ;  or  how  in  the  latter  interest  she  may  sup- 
press the  home  instructions,  and  say,  "  Yes."  In 
either  case  only  half  of  her  has  acted  while  the 
other  half  has  been  suppressed ;  and  only  half  of 
her  is  active  in  going  to  the  theater  or,  in  the  other 
case,  participates  in  staying  away.  Suppose,  how- 
ever, that  in  this  young  woman  her  knowledge  of 
the  theater  is  not  split  into  the  two  dissociated 
complexes  of  the  deliciously  pleasurable  and  the 
abhorrently  wicked.  She  can  view  her  invitation  to 
the  theater  without  either  fascination  or  fear.  Her 
knowledge,  both  direct  and  hearsay,  as  it  accumu- 
lates, integrates  around  the  central  theme  *  thea- 
ter ' ;  and  her  reactions  toward  this,  the  various 
appeals  which  this  makes,  meet  one  another,  so  that 
the  theater's  attractive  and  repulsive  aspects,  not 
being  dissociated,  work  on  one  another  directly, 
and  this  balanced  interplay  works  itself  out  in  a 
discriminating  line  of  conduct.  It  is  precisely  like 
the  case  of  fire  which  both  pleases  and  yet  bums 
the  baby ;  who,  if  not  artificially  deterred,  learns  to 


124-  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

handle  fire  discriminatingly.  The  young  woman 
learns  to  avail  herself  of  whatever  is  good  in  the 
theater  and  to  avoid  what  is  bad.  The  sanction  is, 
here  as  before,  the  easily  perceivable  fact  that  the 
theater  is  partly  good  and  partly  bad.  To  the 
young  man  she  probably  replies,  "  I  shall  be  de- 
lighted to  go  to  the  theater  with  you,  but  from 
what  I  read  and  hear  I  doubt  if  the  play  you  men- 
tion would  be  altogether  interesting  to  us.  Shall 
we  not  choose  another.?  "  Now,  this  is  not  com- 
promise ;  it  is  discrimination.  It  gives  full  play  to 
all  the  individual's  tendencies,  and  these  are  in- 
variably to  avoid  evil,  save  when  dissociation  and 
its  concomitant  suppression  have  interfered  with 
clear  perception.  Here  nothing  has  been  sup- 
pressed, and  as  the  young  woman  follows  out  this 
line  of  action,  her  whole  nature  is  actively  par- 
ticipating. Her  *  conscience,'  too,  is  with  her. 
And  such  a  young  woman  will  end  neither  as  a 
careless  butterfly  nor  as  a  grim  ascetic.  And  it  is 
to  be  noted  that  from  this  process  of  discrimina- 
tion arises  not  merely  sound  moral  choice  in  the 
individual,  but  sound  moral  development  of  the 
institution  itself.  The  theater  is  not  evolved  into 
an  instrument  of  civilization  by  either  its  undis- 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  125 

criminating  devotees  or  its  undis criminating  dis- 
paragers. 

Here,  as  previously  in  the  case  of  fire  and  of  to- 
bacco, we  see  that  moral  conduct  is  discriminating 
conduct ;  morality  is  wisdom.  And  as  the  will  and 
the  intellect  are  one,  so  they  develop  as  one.  We 
have  seen  that  the  element  of  conduct  is  a  course 
of  action  toward  the  object  or  situation  in  the 
environment,  and  that  such  courses  of  action  are 
embodied  in  motor  attitudes  of  the  individual 
toward  the  object  or  situation.  Now  since  this 
Freudian  point  of  view  presents  morals  as 
nothing  but  the  higher  reaches  of  behavior,  as  in 
one  continuous  series,  indeed,  with  natural  history 
at  large,  it  behooves  us  to  inquire  why  and  how 
suppression  ever,  rather  than  discrimination,  comes 
to  take  place,  and  why  suppression  and  dissociation 
are  opposite  to  discrimination.  Let  us  here  con- 
sider the  motor  attitude  of  the  average  person 
toward  mushrooms  that  he  finds  when  out  walking. 
I  meet  in  a  field  near  the  edge  of  woods  some  clus- 
ters of  low,  small,  light-brown  mushrooms.  These 
look  like  the  edible  Agaricus  campestrisy  and  I  am 
inclined  to  eat  some  of  them.  But  I  have  read  that 
the  very  poisonous  Agaricus  phalloides  in  some  of 


126  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

its  seven  varieties  strongly  resembles  the  campes- 
tris,  and  I  have  never  learned  the  visible  marks  by 
which  the  two  are  to  be  distinguished.  Therefore 
I  am  also  inclined  not  to  eat  them.  Here,  then,  I 
am  in  front  of  one  object  which  stimulates  in  me 
two  antagonistic  courses  of  action — to  sit  down 
and  eat,  and  to  walk  on,  taking  care  not  even  to 
handle.  I  cannot  do  both,  for  they  are  opposed. 
And  they  are  therefore  dissociated,  for  it  is  prob- 
able that  opposition  is  the  one  invariable  source 
of  dissociation.  Whichever  course  of  action  I  fol- 
low, the  other  is  suppressed.  But  this  latter  gives 
evidences  of  itself,  for  if  I  walk  on  I  find  myself 
doing  so  lingeringly  and  casting  my  eyes  back  from 
time  to  time  and  wondering  if  these  really  are  the 
poisonous  ones;  or  if  I  sit  down  to  eat  some  of 
them,  I  find  myself  only  nibbling,  every  now  and 
then  rejecting  a  mouthful,  and  feeling^a  distinct 
tonus  in  my  leg  muscles  urging  me  to  be  up  and 
off.  This  is  like  the  exquisitely  logical  position  of 
one  who,  in  throes  of  uncertainty  whether  to  com- 
mit suicide,  gulps  down  a  tiny  swallow  of  the 
poison.  In  short,  my  behavior  toward  mushrooms 
is  thoroughly  equivocal;  one  and  the  same  visual 
stimulus  excites  in  me  two  antagonistic  responses, 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  127 

and  I  act  as  if  *  the  mushrooms  were  both  poison- 
ous and  not  poisonous ;  that  is,  if  I  walk  on,  I  am 
visibly  impeded  in  doing  so,  and  if  I  partake  I  can- 
not do  so  freely.  This  issue  here  involved  would 
hardly  be  called  a  moral  one,  and  yet  the  predicate 
*  wrong '  would  very  naturally  be  applied  to  such 
an  ambiguous  attitude  as  the  one  described.  We 
have  so  far  one  object  responded  to,  two  modes  of 
response,  their  antagonism  or  dissociation,  their 
interference  and  the  partial  suppression  of  each  by 
the  other. 

But  now  let  someone  explain  to  me  the  visible 
marks  of  difference  between  the  Agaricus  phal- 
loides  and  the  campestris.  At  once  my  conduct  is 
changed.  Now  on  espying  a  cluster  of  light-brown 
mushrooms,  I  go  directly  up  until  I  can  see  whether 
they  are  the  campestris  or  the  phalloides.  And 
if  they  are  the  former,  I  sit  down  without  com- 
punction and  eat  my  fill ;  if  the  latter,  I  resume  my 
walk  quite  as  if  they  did  not  exist.  This  is  dis- 
crimination.   The  stimulus  that  formerly  excited 

•  This  is  not  a  bad  instance  of  the  *  as  if  relation,  a 
relation  which  deserves  more  analysis  than  it  has  received. 
The  employment  of  '  as  if '  and  '  qtia '  by  philosophers  gives 
the  psychologist  a  certain  clew  as  to  the  state  of  their  cere- 
bration. 


1^8  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

two  dissociated  modes  of  response  is  now  differenti- 
ated into  two  stimuli,  each  of  which  excites  (me  of 
these  modes.  There  is  now  no  suppression  because 
the  other  mode  of  response  is  not  in  the  least  de- 
gree stimulated.  My  conduct  toward  either  mush- 
room is  now  integral;  that  is,  the  mechanism  within 
me  has  taken  one  more  step  toward  *  integration.' 
The  dissociation  of  the  two  modes  exists  as  before, 
but  it  is  now  harmless  because  the  two  will  never 
again  be  excited  by  the  one  stimulus.  In  other 
words,  it  is  not  dissociated  paths,  but  the  simul- 
taneous excitation  of  dissociated  (i.e.,  antagonis- 
tic) paths  by  one  stimulus  that  is  harmful. 

This  makes  clear,  I  trust,  the  relation  between 
suppression,  dissociation,  and  discrimination.  My 
contention  is  that  every  moral  failure  and  every 
moral  triumph  is  precisely  analogous  to  this  case  of 
the  mushrooms.  And  we  can  now  see  how  and  why 
suppressions  occur  in  this  world  of  ours.  It  is 
through  lack  of  knowledge.  Our  first  contact  with 
objects  presents  us  with  anomalies,  contradictions, 
perplexities.  Until  further  experience  teaches  us 
to  discriminate  further  particulars  within  these  ob- 
jects, we  shall  be  in  some  degree  the  victims  of 
suppression,  and  our  conduct  will  be  to  the  same 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  129 

extent  equivocal,  immoral.  A  person  who  knows 
the  theater  only  as  *  the  theater,'  without  internal 
distinction  or  nuance,  observes  that  the  most  pat- 
ternable  persons  support  the  institution  without 
detriment  to  themselves,  and  on  the  other  hand  that 
the  very  dregs  of  society  also  go  to  '  the  theater ' 
and  come  away  as  from  a  bath  in  mud.  For  such  a 
person,  then,  '  the  theater '  is  good  and  it  is  bad ; 
or  it  may  present  itself  as  *  delightful  and  yet  sin- 
ful,' which  is  equally  a  flat  contradiction  in  terms. 
And  we  have  already  considered  the  four  possible 
ways  of  meeting  the  quandary — ^to  go  or  not  to 
go?  Three  of  those  ways  showed  suppression  in- 
stead of  discrimination,  and  they  were  bad.  The 
fourth  way  was  good  because  in  it  discrimination 
did  away  with  suppression  and  produced  coherent, 
integrated  conduct.  And  lastly,  if  ill  conduct 
arises  through  ignorance,  the  prevalence  of  such 
conduct  is  no  mystery.  In  the  bewildering  turmoil 
which  we  witness  where  the  sentiments  and  aims  of 
individuals,  of  nations,  and  of  races  conflict  with 
one  another,  we  find  an  inexhaustible  variety  of 
contradictory  appearances.  These  give  rise  to  in- 
numerable shortsighted  and  contradictory  opinions 
both  in  the  individual  and  in  the  collective  mind. 


ISO  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

And  when  these  become  crystallized  in  social  con- 
vention, in  the  tenets  and  admonitions  of  the 
church,  or  in  legislative  enactments  of  the  state, 
they  constitute  a  bar  to  the  progress  of  discrimina- 
tion, an  oflBcial  ban  (like  primitive  tabu)  making 
for  suppression.  Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that 
church  and  state  often  play  in  the  adult's  expe- 
rience the  role  of  shortsighted  and  injudicious 
parents.  And  these  institutions,  like  the  parent, 
find  it  advantageous  to  allege  a  moral  sanction 
*  from  above  '  which  authorizes  them  to  impose  their 
will  on  society.  A  little  insight  into  the  actual 
workings  of  church  and  state  shows  how  easily  this 
allegation,  untrue  in  the  first  instance,  turns  into 
an  impudent  piece  of  cajolery.  It  is  truth  and 
the  ever-progressive  discrimination  of  truth  which 
alone  conduce  to  moral  conduct. 

When  all  is  said  and  done,  the  actual  life  of  the 
will  does  consist  of  one  long  series  of  dilemmas, 
decisions  to  be  made  between  two  (or  more)  alter- 
native courses  of  action:  and  the  moral  life  con- 
sists in  settling  these  issues  *  rightly.'  But  then, 
we  ask,  what  is  *  right '  ?  The  answer  indicated  by 
the  doctrine  of  the  wish  is  simple  and  directly 
applicable  in  practice.    Right  is  that  conduct,  at- 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  ISl 

tained  through  discrimination  of  the  facts,  which 
fulfils  all  of  a  man's  wishes  at  once,  suppressing 
none.  The  moral  sanction  is  fact.  The  dilemma  is 
always  presented  really  to  the  intellect  and  the  will 
together ;  which  latter  are  in  the  last  analysis  one 
and  inseparable.  It  is  mental  doubt  as  well  as  voli- 
tional indecision.  It  is  not  more  the  question. 
Shall  I,  or  shall  I  not,  eat  this  mushroom?  than  it 
is  the  question,  Is  this  mushroom  the  edible  or  the 
poisonous  one.''  And  the  moral  failure  is  to  act 
as  if  it  were  both  edible  and  poisonous  at  once; 
which  is  just  as  clearly  a  confusion  of  the  mind  as 
it  is  of  the  will.  The  man  who  is  secretly  untrue 
to  his  friend  is  acting  as  if  the  latter  at  one  time 
were,  and  at  another  time  were  not,  his  friend  (this 
though  the  latter  has  not  correspondingly  al- 
tered) :  and  this  is  an  inconstancy  or  confusion  of 
mind  as  well  as  of  conduct.  He  is  trying  to  keep 
his  friend  as  friend  (i.e.,  as  an  ally  for  purposes  of 
mutual  support)  and  yet  trying  to  exploit  his 
friend  as  victim  (i.e.,  to  the  latter's  undoing)  :  and 
he  is  in  the  case  of  the  fool  who  hopes  to  eat  his 
pudding  and  yet  to  have  it.  Of  course  there  are 
cute  little  arguments,  propounded  by  Machiavelli 
and  others,  that  the  maximum  advantage  has  to  be 


132  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

squeezed  out  of  any  enterprise  by  judiciously-timed 
infidelities,  betrayals,  and  so  forth  and  so  on.  And 
these  all  hinge  on  the  fallacy  of  ends :  for  a  certain 
*  desirable  end '  a  man  will  do  this  *  in  itself  objec- 
tionable '  deed.  But  then  when  the  end  is  obtained 
he  is  grieved  to  discover  that  it  turns  out  to  be 
undesirable,  and  he  finds  that  it  is  rendered  undesir- 
able because  of  the  very  deed  by  which  he  attained 
it.  This  has  been  through  all  the  ages  the  dying 
plaint  of  unprincipled  and  '  successful '  men.  It  is 
only  a  question,  once  more,  of  being  wise  and  ob- 
servant enough  to  foresee  that  the  taint  attaching 
to  the  means  is  going  to  linger  on  and  infect  the 
end.  The  doctrine  of  the  wish  shows  us  that  life 
is  not  lived  for  ends.  Life  is  a  process;  it  is  a 
game  to  be  played  on  the  checkerboard  of  facts. 
Its  motion  is  forward ;  yet  its  motive  power  comes 
not  from  in  front  (from  *  ends  ')  but  from  behind, 
from  the  wishes  which  are  in  ourselves.  We  shall 
play  the  game  rightly  if,  instead  of  so  painfully 
scrutinizing  and  trying  to  suppress  our  wishes,  we 
turn  about  and  lucidly  discriminate  the  facts. 

That  is  ethics  *  from  below.'  The  ethics  *  from 
above '  are  a  very  different  story.  There  Someone 
exhorts  or  obliges  us  to  suppress  our  wishes,  and 


THE  WISH  IN  ETHICS  133 

if  we  observe  Someone  a  bit  carefully  we  shall  all 
too  often  find  that  he  generously  busies  himself 
with  suppressing  the  facts.  Ethics  from  above 
come  indeed  from  above,  from  the  man  or  the  insti- 
tution '  higher  up.'  And  for  this  there  is  a  very 
frail  and  human  reason,  which  no  one  need  go  very 
far  to  discover.  According  to  the  ethics  from 
below,  the  unassuming  ethics  of  the  dust,  facts  are 
the  sole  moral  sanction :  and  facts  impose  the  most 
inexorable  moral  penalties. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOME  BROADER  ASPECTS  OF  THE 
FREUDIAN  ETHICS 

The  ethical  considerations  which  I  have  en- 
deavored to  present,  and  which  I  venture  to  think 
are  a  direct  logical  deduction  from  Freud's  keen 
observations  on  the  human  mind,  are  not  wholly 
out  of  touch  with  earlier  thought  in  the  ethical 
field.  I  believe,  however,  that  the  formula  which 
we  have  now  arrived  at,  for  it  is  so  far  a  formula 
rather  than  a  completed  system,  is,  as  compared 
with  the  previous  ethical  formulations  to  which  it  is 
most  akin,  more  clear,  exact,  and  concrete.  It  is 
a  definite  description  of  what  moral  conduct  is, 
and  therefore  by  the  same  token  is  a  practical 
guide,  a  precept,  for  one  who  desires  to  meet  the 
dilemmas  of  life  in  a  moral  way.  Thus  our  present 
formula, — to  avoid  the  suppression  of  any  reaction 
tendency  by  a  more  complete  discrimination  of  the 
elements  in  the  situation  to  be  reacted  upon,  to 
184 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS     135 

resolve  every  situation  rather  than  to  do  violence 
to  it  by  a  summary  Yes  or  No, — is  unmistakably 
reminiscent  of  that  *  mean '  of  conduct  which 
Aristotle  praised  so  highly.  Yet  I  do  not  see  that 
Aristotle  has  shown  us  the  clear  and  important  dis- 
tinction between  the  middle  course  of  compromise, 
in  its  worst  sense,  and  the  middle  course  of  rational 
discrimination.  Indeed,  Aristotle's  commendation 
of  the  '  mean  '  is  dangerously  near  being  a  general 
counsel  of  lukewarmness ;  although  doubtless  he  did 
not  intend  it  to  be  that.  The  same  is  to  be  said  of 
many  other  similar  utterances,  such  as  Dante's 
condemnation  of  excess  and  Ruskin's  praise  of 
*  temperance.'  They  are  in  some  sense  true,  but 
are  too  abstract  to  be  a  wholly  feasible  practical 
guide.  If  Dante  is  right,  that  every  vice  is  a  virtue 
carried  to  an  unlawful  extreme,  it  is  still  necessary 
for  us  to  know  what  virtue  is  and  what  that  quan- 
tity of  it  is  which  becomes  unlawful. 

A  closer  affinity  exists,  as  the  reader  will  have 
already  noticed,  between  our  ethical  formula  and 
the  three  steps  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic.  Our  case 
of  the  woman  urged  by  opposing  views  and  desires 
regarding  the  theater,  and  finally  reconciling  these 
by  a  process  of  discrimination,  could  be  cited  by 


186  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

Hegel  as  a  clear  case  of  thesis,  antithesis,  and  syn- 
thesis. Hegel  is  at  the  moment  so  greatly  out  of 
fashion  that  one  hesitates  to  cast  a  single  pebble ; 
indeed,  I  would  rather  take  the  opportunity  to 
say  that,  as  it  seems  to  me,  Hegel  is  almost  the 
only  philosopher  who  has  dealt  at  all  responsibly 
with  the  problem  of  error.  And  anyone  is  very 
welcome  to  undertake  to  prove  that  our  dilemma  of 
opposing  motives  and  its  resolution  is  only  an  in- 
stance of  the  three  movements  in  the  dialectic.  Yet 
I  must  insist  that  one  gains  a  cleaner  psychological 
analysis  and  a  more  usable,  not  to  say  a  sounder, 
understanding  of  synthesis  and  resolution,  by 
studying  human  conduct  from  the  Freudian  rather 
than  the  Hegelian  point  of  view.  Hegel  leads  one 
to  suppose  (though  how  fully  he  intended  to  do  so 
I  cannot  say)  that  opposites  are  reconciled  in  the 
final  synthesis ;  that,  to  revert  to  our  last  illustra- 
tion, the  good  and  the  evil  of  the  theater  are  seen 
to  be  somehow  actually  reconciled  and  merged  if 
one  only  views  the  theater  comprehensively  enough. 
This  is,  however,  precisely  what  they  are  not :  the 
good  and  the  evil  of  the  theater  remain  everlast- 
ingly arrayed  against  each  other.  And  for  this 
very  reason  they  can  be  everlastingly  discrimi- 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS     137 

nated.  Hegel  seems  to  dissolve  evil,  and  to  turn 
contradiction  and  negation  into  mere  '  ap- 
pearance,' unreality.  He  does  not  appreciate,  as 
Freud  does,  their  so  very  potent  reality.  On 
the  other  hand,  curiously  enough,  the  Hegelian 
argument  has  given  rise  to  the  practical  be- 
lief that  opposition  and  conflict  are  desirable, 
are  to  be  encouraged  and  promoted — be- 
cause they  will  eventually  emerge  in  a  triumphant 
*  synthesis.'  Thus  it  is  argued  that  in  parliament 
and  convention  it  is  better  that  there  should  be 
several  parties  and  factions,  each  represented  by 
men  who  act  solely  in  the  interests  of  the  party  or 
faction,  than  that  all  members  should  seek  to  view 
impartially  all  of  the  various  considerations  to  be 
met,  and  all  work  directly  for  their  just  reconcilia- 
tion. This  is  to  say  that  conflict  is  better  than  co- 
operation. Such  a  doctrine  may  seem  too  strange 
to  be  credible,  and  yet  I  think  it  will  be  found  to  be 
a  practical  maxim  of  the  day.  Its  widespread  ac- 
ceptance accounts  for  the  disappearance  of  what 
was  once  called  statesmanship  from  the  govern- 
ment of  several  great  countries.  This  fatal  doc- 
trine has  its  root  in  the  conviction  (peculiarly 
Hegelian,  I  believe)  that  opposition  is  the  very 


138  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

condition  not  merely  of  progress,  but  even  of 
process.  Nothing  takes  place  without  conflict,  and 
hence,  to  adduce  an  exact  parallel,  friction  is  the 
cause  of  motion.  And  here  it  is  worth  noting  that 
the  Hegelian  reality,  the  *  Absolute,'  is  absolutely 
static.  Since  conflict  is  unreal,  so  motion  must  also 
be  unreal.  Applied  to  human  behavior,  this  doc- 
trine would  assert  that  that  person  is  nearest  to 
synthesized  activity  whose  native  tendencies  are  the 
most  completely  dissociated  and  antagonistic.  In 
short,  Hegel  and  his  school  have  altogether  lost 
sight  of  harmony  in  process.  Now  it  is  one  thing 
to  say  that  conflict  is  desirable  because  it  leads  to  a 
resolution,  and  a  very  diff'erent  to  say  that  resolu- 
tion is  desirable  because  it  does  away  with  conflict. 
The  Hegelian  emphasis  is  a  downright  fallacy. 
And  thus  while  the  Freudian  formula  moves  in 
three  steps  which  are  to  some  extent  analogous 
with  the  three  phases  of  thesis,  antithesis,  and  syn- 
thesis, it  is  nevertheless  a  very  different  analysis  of 
the  moral  problem.  The  similarity  is  in  fact  super- 
ficial. 

A  far  more  interesting  and  indeed  a  remarkable 
point  of  contact  between  the  view  here  outlined 
and  the  history  of  ethics  is  to  be  found  in  the 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      139 

Socratic  and  Platonic  conception  of  the  will.  In 
the  *  Gorgias  '  (468)  Socrates  says:  "  We  wiU  to 
do  that  which  conduces  to  our  good,  and  if  the  act 
is  not  conducive  to  our  good  we  do  not  will  it; 
for  we  will,  as  you  say,  that  which  is 
our  good,  but  that  which  is  neither  good  nor 
evil,  or  simply  evil,  we  do  not  will."  And 
again,  Socrates  asks  Polus :  "  But  does  he  [any 
man]  do  what  he  wills  if  he  does  what  is  evil?  Why 
do  you  not  answer  ?  "  Pol.  "  Well,  I  suppose  he  does 
not."  And  again,  in  the  "  Protagoras  "  (358)  we 
read :  "  Then  you  agree,  I  [Socrates]  said,  that  the 
pleasant  is  the  good,  and  the  painful  evil.  .  .  . 
Then,  I  said,  if  the  pleasant  is  the  good,  nobody 
does  anything  under  the  idea  or  conviction  that 
some  other  thing  would  be  better  and  is  also  attain- 
able, when  he  might  do  the  better.  And  this  in- 
feriority of  a  man  to  himself  is  merely  ignorance, 
as  the  superiority  of  a  man  to  himself  is  wisdom. 
.  .  .  Then,  I  said,  no  man  voluntarily  pursues 
evil,  or  that  which  he  thinks  to  be  evil.  To  prefer 
evil  to  good  is  not  in  human  nature;  and  when  a 
man  is  compelled  to  choose  one  of  two  evils,  no  one 
will  choose  the  greater  when  he  might  have  the 
less." 


140  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

The  argument  seems  to  be  that  we  do  things 
which  are  not  conducive  to  our  good,  but  we  do  not 
mil  them.  And  if  we  do  them  it  is  through  igno- 
rance, and  of  course  we  are  not  free  to  will  that 
which  our  ignorance  hides  from  us.  The  more 
psychological  distinction  between  will  and  free- 
will is  not  drawn,  and  the  upshot  of  the  argument 
is  that  none  but  the  wise  man  is  free  to  will.  Wis- 
dom and  virtue  are  one,  and  only  the  wise  and  vir- 
tuous man  is  free. 

Aristotle,  with  a  characteristic  touch,  hastened 
to  blur  this  clear-cut  picture  by  declaring  that  the 
evil  man  is  equally  free  to  will  his  evil ;  thus  entirely 
disposing  of  the  doctrine  that  wisdom  and  virtue 
are  the  same,  and  are  essential  to  freedom.  And 
the  Socratic-PIatonic  doctrine  has  remained  com- 
paratively without  influence  ever  since.  Thomas 
Aquinas  upheld  it,  but  nevertheless  the  subsequent 
history  of  ethics  and  psychology  shows  a  steady 
degradation  of  this  high-minded  doctrine ;  it  giving 
way  to  the  dogma  that  moral  *  responsibility '  de- 
mands a  *  contingency '  in  human  action,  to  the 
dogma  of  *  absolute  fiat,'  and  so  forth.  Perhaps  it 
is  that  no  philosopher  since  Thomas  has  had  a 
sufficient  acquaintance  with  both  virtue  and  wisdom 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      141 

to  recognize  their  identity;  or  perhaps  the  so- 
called  science  of  psychology  developed  a  system  of 
vagaries  in  which  the  earlier  truth  could  find  no 
place.  In  any  case  the  Socratic  doctrine  of  the 
identity  of  wisdom,  virtue,  and  freedom  has  been 
left,  as  if  it  were  a  romantic  dream,  too  exalted  and 
unreal  for  either  ecclesiastical  or  academic  ethics  to 
take  hold  of. 

Now  the  Freudian  ethics  is  a  literal  and  concrete 
justijScation  of  the  Socratic  teaching.  We  have  seen 
throughout  that  truth  is  the  sole  moral  sanction, 
and  that  the  discrimination  of  hitherto  unrealized 
facts  is  the  one  way  out  of  every  moral  dilemma. 
This  is  precisely  to  say  that  virtue  is  wisdom. 
Freud  gives  the  subject  a  more  concrete  psycho- 
logical analysis  than  did  Socrates  or  Plato ;  and  he 
proves  the  doctrine  to  hold  in  the  special  case. 
And  as  regards  freedom,  Freud's  confirmation  is 
even  more  remarkable.  We  have  seen  that  the  op- 
posite of  discrimination  is  suppression,  the  condi- 
tion in  which  a  person  in  the  face  of  a  given  situa- 
tion is  stimulated  to  two  (or  more)  antagonistic 
courses  of  action,  so  that  whichever  course  he  pur- 
sues, the  antagonistic  innervations  prompting  to 
the  other  course  constantly  impede  him ;  as  I  showed 


142  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

especially  in  the  instance  of  the  mushrooms.  Such 
a  person  is  not  free  to  take  any  of  the  courses,  but 
in  every  case  is  hampered  and  held  back  by  his  own 
opposed  inclinations.  This  is  indeed  the  very  serf- 
dom of  the  will.  And  freedom,  like  virtue,  comes 
through  discrimination,  i.e.,  wisdom.  The  person 
in  whom  there  are  no  suppressions,  in  whom  the 
process  of  discrimination  and  integration  has  gone 
on  successfully,  throws  his  whole  force  into  what- 
ever he  does ;  he  does  it  without  constraint.  This 
person  has  *  free-will.'  And  so  for  Freud,  as  for 
Socrates,  wisdom,  virtue,  and  freedom  are  all  one 
condition  of  the  soul.  Freud  has  shown  how  the 
soul  that  fails  to  attain  this  condition,  that  fails 
to  develop  through  progressive  integrations,  is 
strikingly  inhibited,  repressed,  and  unfree;  and  in 
his  psychiatrical  and  other  volumes  has  copiously 
illustrated  the  variety  of  ways  in  which  such  fail- 
ures occur.  And  it  is  rather  interesting  to  note 
that  in  many  of  these  cases  one  is  at  first  puzzled 
whether  to  describe  the  difficulty  as  nervous  malady, 
mental  inhibition,  or  moral  perversity:  a  perplex- 
ing circumstance  until  one  realizes  that  all 
three  pertain  to  one  and  the  same  genus — suppres- 
sion. 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      143 

The  Socratic  doctrine  is  of  such  cardinal  im- 
portance that  it  is  worth  while  to  consider  two  of 
the  apparent  objections  to  it.  For  it  is  often 
plausibly  alleged  that  on  the  one  hand  many  thor- 
oughly virtuous  persons  are  yet  unwise  and  ill  of 
soul,  while  on  the  other  hand  many  wicked  persons 
are  perfectly  healthy  and  most  desperately  cun- 
ning. Indeed,  so  proverbial  is  this  that  Mephis- 
topheles,  the  archfiend,  is  always  represented  as  a 
supreme  intellect.  As  to  the  first  of  these  argu- 
ments, it  is  of  course  admitted  that  rain  and  light- 
ning fall  on  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike;  so  that 
the  virtuous  person  is  liable  indeed  to  physical  ill- 
ness and  lingering  forms  of  death.  But  aU  the 
curious  inadvertencies  and  stupidities  of  the  so- 
called  virtuous,  and  all  their  ailments  which  by  any 
possibility  can  be  called  mental,  are  found,  when 
they  are  analyzed  and  understood,  to  be  quite  as 
much  departures  from  virtue,  in  the  broader  sense 
of  the  term,  as  they  are  departures  from  health  or 
wisdom.  Freud  has  given  us  a  thousand  classical 
examples,  to  which  Alfred  Adler  has  added  further 
cases,  which  show  how  oblique  and  unhallowed  mo- 
tives are  habitually  suppressed  {not  victoriously 
overcome  by  discrimination)  in  order  to  produce 


144  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  appearance  of  virtue,  and  how  just  these  sup- 
pressions work  havoc  with  every  aspect  of  mental 
integrity.  It  is  thus  the  apparently  most  virtuous 
who  are  the  most  often  afflicted  with  mental  dis- 
abilities of  one  sort  and  another.  It  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  popular  misapprehension  has 
arisen.  But  the  genuinely  virtuous,  those  who 
have  integrated  away  every  suppression,  are  also 
the  genuinely  healthy  of  mind.  And  let  no  one 
think  of  his  poor  dear  friends.  A.,  B.,  and  C,  as 
paragons  of  virtue  yet  afflicted  with  morbid 
anxiety,  forgetfulness,  motor  incoordinations,  bad 
dreams,  or  hallucinations,  until  he  has  studied 
Freud's  cases  and  learned  to  read  the  sort  of  sub- 
conscious wishes  that  lurk  beneath  a  virtue  so  ex- 
treme and  so  bedridden.  Moreover,  the  incon- 
veniences consequent  on  suppression  are  often  of 
a  sort  that  seems  to  be  entirely  physical — migraine, 
lameness,  etc. ;  and  herein,  perhaps,  lies  whatever  is 
true  in  a  certain  half-truth  that  has  been  utilized 
by  Christian  Science. 

Secondly,  in  regard  to  those  who  are  wicked  and 
yet  seem  to  be  both  healthy  and  shrewd,  it  is  to 
be  admitted  at  once  that  such  persons  sometimes 
have  few  internal  suppressions.     They  have  de- 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      145 

veloped  so  far  fairly  healthily,  and  they  have 
largely  avoided  suppressions  by  dint  of  a  studied 
inattention  to  the  disagreeable  and  a  frank  pur- 
suit of  whatever  pleases  them  regardless  of  con- 
sequences. The  downright  wicked  person  some- 
times has  the  virtue  of  not  being  a  hypocrite.  But 
all  this  is,  as  I  said,  regardless  of  consequences. 
And  the  consequences  soon  appear,  so  that  the  lat- 
ter end  of  the  wicked  presents  a  picture  of  abject 
mental  inadequacy,  the  cruelest  suppressions,  and 
presently  of  mental  disease.  We  often  think  of  the 
wicked  as  supremely  young,  just  taken  in  some 
act  of  dashing  highwaymanship,  and  while  envy- 
ing them  their  youthful  vigor  we  forget  that  they 
are  true  cases  of  arrested  development.  In  short, 
the  picture  we  make  to  ourselves  is  of  the  brief 
heyday  of  wickedness,  and  we  fail  to  see  that  this 
very  wickedness  reveals  a  now  arrested  integration, 
and  that  the  next  phase  will  be  a  fearful  display  of 
suppressions,  anxieties,  and  mental  incapacity  (and 
all  this  apart  from  any  artificial  penalties  which  the 
wickedness  may  incur).  An  important  circum- 
stance which  often  hides  from  us  the  fact  that 
wisdom  and  virtue  are  in  principle  one,  and  that 
principle  the  progressive  lifelong  integration  of 


146  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

experience,  is  that  the  earlier  steps  of  integration 
concern  merely  the  child's  successful  navigation  of 
his  immediate  tangible  surroundings.  The  reces- 
sion of  the  stimulus  has  as  yet  not  proceeded  very 
far.  As  the  stimulus  recedes  further,  that  is,  as 
the  integration  of  experience  continues,  the  things 
with  which  the  youth  learns  how  to  deal  are  less  and 
less  tangible  objects,  but  are  rather  aspects,  situa- 
tions, and  the  like.  Then  develop  integrated  modes 
of  behavior  toward  more  comprehensive  aspects, 
such  as  science,  business,  and  society  at  large; 
while  the  highest  stages  of  integration  produce 
the  most  comprehensive  courses  of  action,  and  these 
are  inevitably  of  the  sort  which  we  call  moral.  In 
moral  conduct  the  stimulus  has  receded  the  far- 
thest and  such  conduct  is  behavior  toward  the 
most  universal  entities,  toward  truth,  honor,  vir- 
tue, and  the  like.  And  one  further  stage  is  pos- 
sible, the  religious.  Thus  we  say  that  at  first  the 
child  is  developing  its  body,  then  its  practical  in- 
telligence, then  its  theoretical  mind,  then  its  moral 
and  finally  its  religious  *  nature.'  So  that  if  in- 
tegration ceases  at  a  certain  point,  we  may  see  the 
phenomenon  of  a  fairly  sound  body  and  mind,  lack- 
ing both  morals  and  religion. 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      147 

Nevertheless  I  am  careful  to  say  only  *  fairly 
sound.'  For  in  point  of  fact  it  appears  that  the 
process  which  will  definitely  stop  the  integration 
at  any  one  of  its  later  stages  generally  commences 
very  early  in  the  child's  life,  perhaps  in  the  cradle. 
And  if  the  moral  nature  is  never  to  be  developed, 
certain  warps  and  twists  can  generally  be  found  in 
the  already  existing  mind,  which  show  why  its  fu- 
ture growth  is  to  be  thus  limited.  The  Mephistoph- 
eles  legend,  of  a  very  wicked  man  yet  thoroughly 
master  of  himself  and  sound  in  body  and  mind,  is 
about  as  untruthful  a  picture  as  mythology  af- 
fords.* It  may  be  here  hinted  that  at  the  present 
stage  of  '  western  civilization '  the  moral,  and  the 
higher  stages  of  mental,  integration  appear  most 
often  to  shatter  on  a  very  prevalent  malformation 
of  what  may  be  called  the  '  ego  complex.'  But  to 
develop  this  theme  further  would  be  beyond  our 
present  scope.f 

Thus  for  the  Freudian  view  which  I  have  en- 
deavored to  outline  morality  is  the  most  inclusive 
knowledge.     Ethics  is  solely  a  question,  as  Epic- 

*  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  prevailing  cynicism  of  the 
societies  and  epochs  in  which  this  tradition  has  flourished. 

fCf.  Alfred  Adler:  "  Ueber  den  nervosen  Charakter." 
Bergman,  Wiesbaden,  1912. 


148  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

tetus  so  long  ago  said,  of  "  dealing  wisely  with  the 
phenomena  of  existence."  In  a  way,  indeed,  this 
has  been  the  main  contention  of  all  practical  moral- 
ists. What  is  new  is  that  Freud  shows  what  in  the 
concrete  case  the  mental  mechanism  of  wise  dealing 
is.  It  is  the  establishment  through  discrimination 
of  consistent  and  not  contradictory  (mutually  sup- 
pressive) courses  of  action  toward  phenomena. 
The  moral  sanction  lies  always  in  facts  presented 
by  the  phenomena;  morality  in  the  discrimination 
of  those  facts. 

This  is,  of  course,  an  ethic  *  from  below.'  For 
such  a  view  morals  evolve  and  develop ;  they  grow, 
and  are  a  part  of  the  general  growth  and  evolution 
of  the  universe.  This  is  in  sharp  contrast  with  a 
considerable  portion  of  academic  ethics,  where  in 
one  form  or  another  we  find  the  intimation  that 
moral  ideals  are  something  imposed  *  from  above  ' ; 
the  moral  sanction  is  somehow  supermundane. 
And  these  academic  discussions  themselves  of  ethics 
hang  suspended  in  the  air,  and  seem  unable  to 
establish  connection  with  the  world  in  which  we 
live.  Thus  *  the  good,'  for  an  instance,  is  in  many 
modem  (and  for  that  matter  ancient)  discussions 
the  subject-matter  of  ethics,  but  it  appears  that 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS     149 

this  '  good  '  can  be  neither  defined  nor  pointed  out, 
and  surely  until  this  pivotal  entity  can  be  somehow 
located  among  the  concrete  phenomena  of  exist- 
ence, the  ethical  fabric  that  rests  thereon  is  merely 
a  systematic  jargon.     Or  again,  we  find  the  word 

*  value  '  as  representing  the  cardinal  concept  of  sys- 
tematic ethics.  It  is  a  popular  word  just  now,  and 
is  the  theme  of  no  end  of  current  philosophic 
vagarizing.  But  this  word,  too,  despite  its  seem- 
ingly more  definite  psychological  meaning,  retains 
a  deal  of  the  same  abstract  and  unseizable  quality. 
It  is  merely  a  sort  of  psychological  synonym  for 

*  the  good.' 

In  nearly  all  these  philosophic  discussions  of 
ethics  one  has  somehow  the  haunting  sense  of  a 
wrongness  of  direction.  Virtue  is  somehow  im- 
posed from  above,  it  is  descending  upon  us.  And 
the  unfortunate  part  of  this  is  that  it  has  to  de- 
scend very  low  indeed  before  it  reaches  us;  and 
when  there,  it  has  lost  the  buoyancy  wherewith  to 
lift  us  up.  Also  this  academic  misapprehension 
may  be  seen  reflected  in  the  practical  sphere.  We 
hear  everywhere  of  bringing  this  and  that  good 
thing  down  to  the  unfortunate  and  the  debased,  and 
then  of  '  adapting  '  it  to  the  taste  and  comprehen- 


160  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

sion  of  these  same  unfortunate  and  debased.  Thus 
at  the  present  moment  a  so-called  evangelist  who  is 
touring  the  country  is  accounted  thoroughly  suc- 
cessful in  "  bringing  the  gospel  to  the  masses  " ; 
and  his  method  is  to  couch  his  message  in  language 
that  would  make  a  cowboy  blush.  He  has  reached 
the  masses  indeed,  and  gone  lower  than  the  masses ; 
but  has  not  the  *  gospel '  become  somewhat  un- 
recognizably transformed  during  this  descent?  It 
seems  to  me  a  palpable  fact  that  every  form  of 
philanthropy  and  *  social  service  '  to-day  is  more  or 
less  infected  with  this  fallacy.  The  idea  is  every- 
where to  bring  the  good  down,  in  the  false  hope  that 
this  will  somehow  lift  the  masses  up.  But  why 
shall  anything  strive  upwards,  when  all  that  is  high 
is  bidden  to  descend  ?  And  is  it  not  a  striking  and 
ominous  fact  that  to-day  the  word  *  aspire  '  is  never 
heard? 

These  egregious  ethics  of  the  air  have  produced 
other  tangible  and  all-pervading  consequences. 
Since  *  ethics  '  is  such  a  floating  vapor,  many  sober- 
minded  persons  conclude,  and  not  illoglcally,  that 
it  Is  quite  apart  from  the  practical  conduct  of  life. 
And  they  lead  their  lives  accordingly.  Thus  the 
Teutonic  races,  in  their  rigorous   fashion,  have 


ASPECTS  OF  FREUDIAN  ETHICS      151 

codified  this  conclusion.  Ethics,  they  explicitly 
say,  have  no  part  to  play  in  politics  and  state- 
craft ;  these  are  a  science  and  they  deal  solely  with 
realities.  This  science  is  '  Realpolitik,'  the  Politics 
of  Reality.  The  effect  of  such  a  doctrine  when 
put  in  practice  is  now  being  written  on  the  pages  of 
the  world's  history  in  letters  so  large  that  even  he 
who  runs  must  read.  And  similarly,  the  world  over, 
it  tends  to  be  held  by  high  and  low  that  the  *  scien- 
tific '  attitude  supersedes  the  ethical.  The  ethics  of 
the  air  are  indeed  effete. 

But  set  against  all  this,  and  as  different  from 
it  as  the  day  from  night,  are  the  ethics  of  the  dust. 
It  presents  mind  itself  as  an  evolution,  and  morals 
as  one  of  the  higher  stages  of  this  process.  Here 
we  have  man,  as  *  real '  and  as  '  scientific  '  as  you 
please,  growing  upwards.  (And  I  insist  that  the 
direction  is  somehow  right.)  He  who  does  not  see 
the  real  sanction  of  morality,  that  morality  is  a 
stage  of  wisdom  and  a  step  higher  than  *  science,' 
is  merely  shortsighted.  And  the  facts  can  safely 
be  trusted  to  impress  in  due  time  their  lesson,  to 
drive  us  on  to  morals.  On  such  an  ethics  it  seems 
to  me  that  Freud's  discovery  of  the  *  wish,'  the 
articulate  unit  of  mind  and  character,  casts  con- 


162  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

siderable  light.  Much  remains  to  be  learned,  but  in 
this  learning  it  may  be  that  the  suppression- 
discrimination  formula  for  wishes,  which  we  have 
been  studying,  will  serve  somewhat  as  a  talisman. 


SUPPLEMENT 

RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION  * 

I.  The  Specific-Response  Relation 

The  novelty  exhibited  by  things  at  the  moment 

of  their  synthesis  into  an  organized  whole  has  been 

frequently   commented   on.     Such   moments   may 

seem  to  be  *  critical,'  as  when  two  gases  condense 

into  a  liquid  and  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  gases 

are  replaced  by  those  characteristic  of  fluids ;  or 

there  may  be  less  appearance  of  discontinuity,  as 

when  a  solid  is  slowly  dissolved  in  a  liquid  and  the 

latter  as  slowly  acquires  new  properties.    In  either 

case,  separate  entities  have  been  organized  into  a 

new  whole,  and  their  former  action  as  independent 

parts  is  now  combined  in  the  action  of  the  whole. 

And  while  it  is  obvious  that  the  whole  is  nothing 

more  than  the  parts  as  thus  organized,  and  that 

the  properties  of  the  whole  are  nothing  more  than 

*  Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology, 
and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  XII,  Nos.  14  and  15,  July  8 
and  July  22,  1915. 

158 


154  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  properties  of  the  parts  now  acting  in  coopera- 
tion, it  is  nevertheless  true  that  the  whole  now  does 
things  which  the  isolated  parts  never  did  or  could 
do.  New  phenomena,  new  laws  and  functions  have 
been  developed. 

Most  of  us  believe  that  the  appearance  of  life 
was  such  a  critical  moment  in  the  evolution  of  the 
universe:  that  life  came  into  existence  when  some, 
perhaps  a  specific,  sort  of  chemical  process  was  set 
up  under  such  conditions  as  maintained  it  around  a 
general  point  of  equilibrium.  The  result  was  un- 
doubtedly novel ;  and  more  novelties  were  to  come. 
Living  substance  was  to  acquire  a  protective  en- 
velope, to  become  irritable,  conductive,  and  con- 
tractile, to  develop  specific  irritability  to  many 
stimuli,  to  get  the  power  of  locomotion,  and  much 
else.  Now  in  the  course  of  this  further  evolution, 
there  is  a  critical  point  which  is  worthy  of  notice. 
It  is  the  point  where  the  irritable,  contractile,  and 
conductive  tissues  develop  systematic  relations 
which  enable  them  to  function  as  an  integral  whole. 
Here,  too,  novelty  ensues. 

How  *  critical '  this  point  is,  how  sudden  and 
well-defined,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  how  gradual, 
cannot  as  yet  be  told.    The  integrative  process  in 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         155 

the  nervous  system,  as  Sherrington  so  well  calls  it, 
has  not,  even  yet,  been  observed  in  suflScient  detail. 
But  this  is  of  secondary  importance ;  and  the  result 
of  the  process  we  do  know  definitely.  This  is,  that 
the  phenomena  evinced  by  the  integrated  organism 
are  no  longer  merely  the  excitation  of  nerve  or  the 
twitching  of  muscle,  nor  yet  the  play  merely  of 
reflexes  touched  off  by  stimuli.  These  are  all  pres- 
ent and  essential  to  the  phenomena  in  question,  but 
they  are  merely  components  now,  for  they  have 
been  integrated.  And  this  integration  of  reflex 
arcs,  with  all  that  they  involve,  into  a  state  of  sys- 
tematic interdependence  has  produced  something 
that  is  not  merely  reflex  action.  The  biological 
sciences  have  long  recognized  this  new  and  further 
thing,  and  called  it  '  behavior.' 

Of  recent  years,  many  of  the  workers  in  animal 
psychology  have  been  coming  to  call  this  the  sci- 
ence of  behavior,  and  have  been  dwelling  less  and 
less  on  the  subject  of  animal '  consciousness.'  They 
do  not  doubt,  any  of  them,  that  at  least  the  higher 
animals  are  *  conscious  ' ;  but  they  find  that  noth- 
ing but  the  behavior  of  animals  is  susceptible  of 
scientific  observation.  Furthermore,  several  stu- 
dents in  the  human  field  have  come  to  the  same  con- 


166  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

elusion — that  not  the  *  consciousness,'  but  the  be- 
havior of  one's  fellow-men,  and  that  alone,  is  open  to 
investigation.  Several  volumes  have  been  put  forth 
which  even  undertake  to  construe  human  psychol- 
ogy entirely  in  terms  of  behavior.  It  is  obvious 
that  this  is  an  unstable  condition  in  which  the  sci- 
ence now  jSnds  itself.  We  cannot  continue  thus,  each 
man  proclaiming  his  own  unquestionable  gift  of 
*  consciousness,'  but  denying  that  either  his  fellow- 
men  or  the  animals  evince  the  slightest  indication 
of  such  a  faculty.  Now  I  believe  that  a  somewhat 
closer  definition  of  *  behavior '  will  show  it  to  in- 
volve a  hitherto  unnoticed  feature  of  novelty,  which 
will  throw  light  on  this  matter. 

Precisely  how  does  this  new  thing,  '  behavior,' 
differ,  after  all,  from  mere  reflex  action?  Cannot 
each  least  quiver  of  each  least  muscle  fiber  be 
wholly  explained  as  a  result  of  a  stimulus  imping- 
ing on  some  sense-organ,  and  setting  up  an  impulse 
which  travels  along  definite  nerves  with  definite 
connections,  and  comes  out  finally  at  a  definite 
muscle  having  a  certain  tonus,  etc.,  all  of  which  is 
merely  reflex  action?  Yes,  exactly  each  least  com- 
ponent can  be  so  explained,  for  that  is  just  what, 
and  all  that,  it  is.    But  it  is  the  coordinated  totality 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         157 

of  these  least  components  which  cannot  be  described 
in  such  terms,  nor  indeed  in  terms  resembling 
these.  For  such  neural  and  reflex  terms  fail  to 
seize  that  integration  factor  which  has  now  trans- 
formed reflex  action  into  something  else,  i.e., 
behavior.  We  require,  then,  an  exact  definition 
of  behavior. 

But  before  proceeding  to  this  definition  we  shall 
probably  find  useful  an  illustration  from  another 
science,  which  was  once  in  the  same  unstable  state 
of  transition  as  psychology  is  now.  In  physics  a 
theory  of  causation  once  prevailed,  which  tried  to 
describe  causal  process  in  terms  of  successive 
*  states,'  the  *  state '  of  a  body  at  one  moment  be- 
ing the  caiise  of  its  *  state '  and  position  at  the 
next.  Thus  the  course  of  a  falling  body  was  de- 
scribed as  a  series  of  states  (a,  b,  c,  d,  etc.),  each 
one  of  which  was  the  effect  of  the  state  preceding, 
and  cause  of  the  one  next  following.  This  may  be 
designated  as  the  *  bead  theory  '  of  causation.  In- 
asmuch, however,  as  nothing  could  be  observed 
about  one  of  these  *  states  '  which  would  show  why 
the  next  *  state '  must  necessarily  follow,  or,  in 
other  words,  since  the  closest  inspection  of  '  states  ' 
gave  no  clew  toward  explaining  the  course  or  even 


158  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  continuance  of  the  process,  an  unobservable 
impetus  (vis  viva,  Anstoss,  *  force  ')  was  postulated 
This  hidden  impetus  was  said  to  be  the  ultimate 
secret  of  physical  causation.  But,  alas,  a  secret! 
For  it  remained,  just  as  the  *  consciousness  '  of 
one's  fellow-man  remains  to-day  in  psychology,* 
utterly  refractory  to  further  investigation.     Now 

*  myth  '  is  the  accepted  term  to  apply  to  an  entity 
which  is  believed  in,  but  which  eludes  empirical  in- 
quiry. This  mythical  vis  viva  has  now,  in  good 
part  owing  to  the  efforts  of  Kirchhoff  and  Hertz, 
been  rejected,  and,  what  is  more  important,  with  it 
has  gone  the  bead  theory  itself.  It  is  not  the 
'  previous  state '  of  the  falling  body  which  causes 
it  to  fall,  but  the  earth's  mass.    And  it  is  not  in  the 

*  previous  state '  but  in  laws  that  explanation  re- 
sides, and  no  laws  for  falling  bodies  or  for  any 
other  process  could,  on  the  terms  of  the  bead 
theory,  be  extracted  from  the  phenomena.  But 
laws  were  easily  found  for  physical  processes,  if 
the  observer  persuaded  himself  to  make  the  simple 

*  The  transition  here  in  question  has  been  admirably 
stated,  from  a  slightly  different  point  of  view,  by  W.  P. 
Montague,  in  "  The  Relational  Theory  of  Consciousness  and 
its  Realistic  Implications";  in  this  Journal,  Vol.  Ill,  pp. 
309-316. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION  159 

inquiry,  What  are  the  objects  doing?  *  Now  the 
falling  body  is  not  merely  moving  downwards  past 
the  successive  divisions  of  a  meter-stick  which  I 
have  placed  beside  it  (which  is  all  that  the  bead 
theory  would  have  us  consider),  nor  is  it  essentially 
moving  toward  the  floor  which,  since  a  floor  hap- 
pens to  be  there,  it  will  presently  strike.  The  body 
is  essentially  moving  toward  the  center  of  the 
earth,  and  these  other  objects  could  be  removed 
without  altering  the  influence  of  gravity.  In  short, 
the  fall  of  a  body  is  adequately  described  as  a  func- 
tion of  its  mass,  of  the  earth's  mass,  and  of  the 
distance  between  the  centers  of  the  two.  And  the 
function  is  constant,  is  that  which  in  change  re- 
mains unchanged  (in  the  case  cited  it  is  a  constant 
acceleration).  The  physical  sciences,  of  course, 
have  now  explicitly  adopted  this  function  theory  of 
causation.t  Every  physical  law  is  in  the  last 
analysis  the  statement  of  a  constant  function  be- 
tween one  process  or  thing  and  some  other  process 
or  thing.    This  abandonment  of  the  bead  theory  in 

*  That  the  answer  to  this  question  explains  also  why  they 
do  it,  is  an  important  point,  but  one  with  which  we  are  not 
now  concerned. 

f  Cf.  E.  Cassirer,  "  Substanzbegriff  und  FunktionsbegriflF," 
Berlin,  1910.  The  sciences  have  implicitly  used  this  method 
from  the  very  beginning. 


160  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

favor  of  the  function  theory  requires,  at  the  first, 
some  breadth  and  some  bravery  of  vision. 

Now  psychology  is  at  the  present  moment  ad- 
dicted to  the  bead  theory,  and  I  believe  that  this  is 
responsible  for  the  dispute  about  *  consciousness  ' 
versus  behavior.  Our  disinclination  to  follow  the 
physical  sciences,  to  adopt  the  functional  view  in 
place  of  the  bead  theory,  has  hindered  us  from  de- 
fining accurately  what  behavior  is,  and  this  has  pre- 
vented us  from  recognizing  a  remarkable  novelty 
which  is  involved  in  behavior,  and  which  is  the  result 
of  reflex  action  becoming  organized. 

We  are  prone,  even  the  '  behaviorists  '  among  us, 
to  think  of  behavior  as  somehow  consisting  of  reflex 
activities.  Quite  true,  so  far  as  it  goes.  So,  too, 
coral  reefs  in  the  last  analysis  consist  of  positive 
and  negative  ions,  but  the  biologist,  geographer,  or 
sea-captain  would  miss  his  point  if  he  conceived 
them  in  any  such  terms.  Yet  we  are  doing  the  very 
same  thing  when  we  conceive  the  behavior  of  a  man 
or  animal  in  the  unintegrated  terms  of  neural 
process ;  which  means,  agreeably  to  the  bead  theory, 
the  impinging  of  stimulus  on  sense-organ,  the 
propagation  of  ionization  waves  along  a  fiber,  their 
spread  among  various  other  fibers,  their  combining 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         161 

with  other  similar  waves,  and  eventually  causing 
the  lowered  or  heightened  tonus  of  muscle.  All  this 
is  happening.  But  our  account  has  overlooked  the 
most  essential  thing  of  all — the  organization  of 
these  processes. 

If  now  we  pitch  the  misleading  bead  theory 
straight  overboard,  and  put  our  microscope  back 
into  its  case,  we  shall  be  free  to  look  at  our  behav- 
ing organism  (man,  animal,  or  plant),  and  to  pro- 
pound the  only  pertinent,  scientific  question — 
What  is  this  organism  doing?  All  agree  that  em- 
pirical study  will  elicit  the  answer  to  this  question, 
and  in  the  end  the  complete  answer. 

What,  then,  is  it  doing?  Well,  the  plant  is  being 
hit  by  the  sun's  rays  and  is  turning  its  leaves  until 
they  all  lie  exactly  at  right  angles  to  the  direction 
of  these  rays :  the  stentor,  having  swum  into  a 
region  of  CO25  is  backing  off,  turning  on  its  axis, 
and  striking  out  in  a  new  direction :  the  hen  has  got 
a  retinal  image  of  a  hawk  and  she  is  clucking  to  her 
brood — shoot  the  hawk  or  remove  the  brood  and  she 
stops  clucking,  for  she  is  reacting  to  neither  one 
nor  the  other,  but  to  a  situation  in  which  both  are 
involved :  the  man  is  walking  past  my  window ;  no, 
I  am  wrong,  it  is  not  past  my  window  that  he  is 


162  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

walking;  it  is  to  the  theater;  or  am  I  wrong  again? 
Perhaps  the  man  is  a  journalist,  and  not  the  thea- 
ter, nor  yet  the  play,  but  the  '  society  write-up  '  it 
is  to  which  the  creature's  movements  are  adjusted; 
further  investigation  is  needed.  This  last  instance 
is  important,  for  the  man  '  walking  past  my  win- 
dow '  is  generally  doing  so  in  no  more  pertinent 
a  sense  than  does  the  dead  leaf  fall  to  the  ground 

*  past  my  window.'  Both  are  doing  something  else. 
Herein  the  folly  of  the  bead  theory  becomes  clear. 
This  theory  says  that  in  order  to  understand  the 
man's  actions,  as  he  walks  by,  we  must  consider 
his  successive  *  states,'  for  each  one  is  the  cause 
of  each  succeeding  one.  And  if  we  follow  the 
theory  faithfully,  it  leads  us  back  to  the  successive 

*  states  '  of  each  component  process,  and  ever  back, 
till  we  arrive  at  the  flow  of  ions  in  neuro-muscular 
tissue;  in  which  disintegrating  process  the  man 
with  which  he  started  is  completely  dissolved  and 
lost.*     But  now  the  functional  view,  moving  in 

*  Philosophers  have  justly  denounced  this  view,  but  in 
their  reaction  have  hit  on  another,  the  teleological,  which  is 
unfortunately  no  truer  to  the  facts,  as  I  shall  show  further 
on.  It  is  singular  that  philosophy  at  large,  having  seen 
the  inadequacy  of  the  bead  theory,  should  have  retained  it; 
retained  it,  that  is,  for  the  'mechanical  realm';  and  this 
even  after  the  mechanists  had  abandoned  it. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION  163 

precisely  the  opposite  direction,  admonishes  us  to 
keep  the  man  whole  (if  it  is  behavior  that  we  are 
studying)  and  to  study  his  movements  until  we 
have  discovered  exactly  what  he  is  doing,  that  is, 
until  we  have  found  that  object,  situation,  process 
(or  perhaps  merely  that  relation)  of  which  his  be- 
havior is  a  constant  function.  The  analysis  of  this 
behavior,  as  thus  exactly  described,  will  come  in 
later ;  but  it  in  turn  will  be  carried  on  in  the  same 
spirit — i.e.,  of  discovering  always  and  solely  func- 
tions. The  movements  of  a  plant,  animal,  or  man 
are  always  a  constant  function  of  something,  or  a 
combination  of  such  constant  functions,  and  these 
— the  movements,  the  functions,  and  the  things  of 
which  the  movements  are  a  function — are  always 
open  to  empirical  investigation. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  biologists  and  the  be- 
haviorists  are  doing  just  this  thing — discovering 
constant  functions.  They  are  describing  the  mo- 
tions of  plant  leaves  as  a  function  of  the  direction 
of  the  sun's  rays,  and  are  doing  the  same  for  all  the 
aspects  of  animal  behavior  as  well.  They  have 
done  this  for  a  long  time.  And  there  is  nothing 
*  novel '  in  behavior  as  so  described.  My  point  is, 
firstly,  that  while  the  behaviorists  are  indeed  doing 


164  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

this,  which  is  just  the  right  thing,  they  do  not  real- 
ize the  significance  of  that  which  they  are  doing. 
And  this  is  because,  secondly,  they  are  not  aware  of 
the  remarkable  novelty  which  behavior,  considered 
just  as  they  are  considering  it,  does  in  fact  in- 
volve. 

An  exact  definition  of  behavior  will  reveal  this. 
Let  us  go  about  this  definition.  Behavior  is,  firstly, 
a  process  of  release.  The  energy  with  which  plants 
and  animals  move  ('behave')  is  not  derived  from 
the  stimulus,  but  is'  physiologically  stored  energy 
previously  accumulated  by  processes  of  assimila- 
tion.   The  stimulus  simply  touches  off  this  energy. 

Secondly,  behavior  is  not  a  function  of  the  im- 
mediate stimvltis.  There  are  cases,  it  is  true,  in 
which  behavior  is  a  function,  though  even  here  not 
a  very  simple  function,  of  the  stimulus.  These  are 
cases  of  behavior  in  its  lower  stages  of  develop- 
ment, where  it  is  just  emerging  from  the  direct 
reflex  process.  They  demonstrate  the  continuity 
of  evolution  at  this  point — a  most  important  fact. 
But  as  behavior  evolves,  any  correlation  between 
it  and  the  stimuli  which  are  immediately  affecting 
the  organism  becomes  increasingly  remote,  so  that 
even  in  fairly  simple  cases  it  can  no  longer  be 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         165 

demonstrated.  This  fact,  that  the  immediate 
stimulus  recedes  in  importance,  is  the  interesting 
point  about  the  integration  of  reflexes.  It  has  been 
widely  recognized  in  psychology;  perhaps  most 
conspicuously  by  Spencer,  who  generally  refers  to 
it  under  the  term  '  higher  correspondence.'  One 
will  see  in  what  relatively  early  stages  of  integra- 
tion the  immediate  stimulus  is  thus  lost  sight  of,  if 
one  considers  how  even  the  *  retinal  image  '  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  distant  object  which  casts  that 
image)  is  not,  in  an  exact  sense,  the  actual  physio- 
logical stimulus  ;  yet  the  organism  *  behaves  '  with 
regard  only  to  the  distant  object.  Since,  then, 
behavior  is  not  essentially  a  function  of  immediate 
stimulus,  this  latter  cannot  enter  into  a  definition 
of  behavior. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  thirdly,  behavior  remains 
a  function  of  some  object,  process,  or  aspect  of  the 
objective  environment  (including,  in  rare  cases,  the 
internal  vegetative  organs ;  which  are  still,  how- 
ever, *  objective').  And  this  is  our  crucial  point. 
Not  quite  adequately  realized  by  the  behaviorists,  it 
is  terra  totaliter  incognita  to  the  subjectivists. 
And  the  proposition  negates  their  whole  gospel, 
including  especially  the  notion  of  *  consciousness.' 


166  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

I  shall  revert  to  this.  Here  we  need  only  note  that 
the  behaving  organism,  whether  plant,  fellow-man, 
or  one's  own  self,  is  always  doing  something,  and 
the  fairly  accurate  description  of  this  activity  will 
invariably  reveal  a  law  (or  laws)  whereby  this 
activity  is  shown  to  be  a  constant  function  of  some 
aspect  of  the  objective  world.  One  has  here  the 
same  task  as  in  any  other  strictly  physical  science. 
In  both  cases  some  accuracy  is  needed,  and  in  both 
alike  this  accuracy  can  generally  be  advanced  by 
more  exhaustive  observation.  Thus  it  is  inaccurate 
to  say  that  a  river  flows  toward  the  sea,  since  it 
meanders  about  in  all  directions ;  while  it  is  fairly 
accurate  to  describe  it  as  always  flowing  toward  the 
next  lower  level  of  the  earth's  surface,  and  this  is  a 
law  describing  flow  as  a  constant  function  of  the 
earth's  crust  and  the  position  of  the  earth's  center. 
The  test  is,  of  course,  whether  this  or  that  could 
be  removed  without  changing  the  river's  course :  the 
*  sea '  could  be  removed,  the  *  next  lower  level ' 
could  not.  So  in  behavior,  the  flock  of  birds  is  not, 
with  any  accuracy,  flying  over  the  green  field;  it 
is,  more  essentially,  flying  southwards;  but  even 
this  is  only  a  rough  approximation  to  a  law  of 
migration.    In  all  events  the  flock  of  birds  is  doing 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         167 

something,  and  the  sole  question  which  we  need  ever 
ask  is,  "What  is  it  doing?"  I  have  elsewhere  ex- 
plained how  the  same  question,  and  it  alone,  is 
applicable  to  one^s  own  behavior  (voluntary  or 
other).* 

Now  I  believe  that  the  foregoing  three  proposi- 
tions yield  a  definition  of  behavior.  It  would  run : 
Behavior  is  any  process  of  release  which  is  a  func- 
tion of  factors  external  to  the  mechanism  released. 

But  why  *  any '  process  when  it  is  well  known 
that  behavior  is  a  phenomenon  found  in  none  but 
living  organisms?  Precisely  because  behavior  as 
thus  defined  is  in  fact  a  striking  novelty,  which  does 
not,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  ascertain,  occur  any- 
where in  the  evolutionary  series  prior  to  the  ap- 
pearance of  organized  response.  This  point  is 
somewhat  later,  too,  than  that  at  which  life  ap- 
pears. In  the  ordinary  inorganic  case  of  released 
energy,  the  process, .  once  touched  off^,  proceeds 
solely  according  to  factors  internal  to  the  mecha- 
nism released.  When  a  match  is  touched  to  gun- 
powder the  explosion  is  a  function  of  nothing  but 
the   amount,   quality,    arrangement,   etc.,   of  the 

*Cf.  my  "Concept  of  Consciousness."  Geo.  Allen  and 
Macmillan,  1914.     Pp.  287  et  seq. 


168  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

powder.  The  beginning  of  the  process  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  moment  of  firing ;  but  that  is  all.  When, 
on  the  other  hand,  an  organism  with  integrated 
nervous  system  is  stimulated,  the  organism,  by  vir- 
tue of  internal  energy  released,  proceeds  to  do 
something  of  which  the  strict  scientific  description 
can  only  be  that  it  is  a  constant  function  of  some 
feature  of  the  environment;  and  this  latter  is  by 
no  means  necessarily  the  stimulus  itself.  The  or- 
ganism responds  specifically  to  something  outside,* 
just  as  the  falling  body  moves  specifically  toward 
the  earth's  center.  This  fact  offers  no  opening  for 
the  introduction  here  of  *  subjective '  categories: 
the  investigator  continues  to  ask,  merely.  What  is 
the  organism  doing?  The  answer  will  be  in  strictly 
objective  terms.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  or- 
dinary release  process  is  a  function  of  the  tem- 
perature, moisture,  etc.,  of  the  surrounding  air, 
for  it  is  in  fact  a  function  of  these  only  in  so  far 
as  they  penetrate  and  become  internal  to  the  re- 
leased mechanism.  In  behavior,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  is  a  genuine  *  objective  reference '  to  the  in- 
vironment  which  is  not  found,  so  far  as  I  can  learn, 

•The  above  is  that  stricter  definition  of  *  specific  re- 
sponse '  which  I  have  previously  said  ("  The  New  Realism," 
1912,  p.  355)  that  I  hoped  some  day  to  be  able  to  give. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION  169 

in  the  inorganic,  or  in  the  organic  world  prior  to 
integrated  reflex  response.  This  is  the  novelty 
which  characterizes  behavior.  And  here,  if  any- 
where, evolution  turned  a  corner. 

In  the  second  place,  it  may  be  noted  that  the 
definition  neither  excludes  nor  yet  makes  essential 
the  case  of  the  immediate  stimulus  being  the  object 
of  which  the  behavior  is  a  constant  function.  This 
often  happens,  and  is  characteristic  of  the  simpler 
instances  where  behavior  is  only  beginning  to  be 
differentiated  from  plain  reflex  action.  Evolution 
is  of  course  not  discontinuous,  and  the  development 
from  reflex  action  to  highly  organized  behavior  is 
one  in  which  the  correlation  between  stimulus  and 
organism  becomes  less  and  less  direct,  while  that  be- 
tween the  organism  and  the  object  of  response  be- 
comes more  and  more  prominent.  Plain  reflex 
action  is  a  function  of  the  stimulus  and  of  factors 
internal  to  the  neuro-muscular  arc.  Then  pres- 
ently one  finds  reflex  movements  that  are  due,  as 
one  must  (with  Sherrington)  agree,  to  *so-to-say 
stored  stimuli ' ;  since  the  immediate  stimulus  does 
not  account  for  the  reflex  movement.  It  is  here 
that  behavior  begins,  and  precisely  here  that  the 
*  bead  theory  '  would  lead  us  astray.    The  response 


170  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

in  question  is  a  response  to  a  past  event,  it  is  3e- 
scribable  only  in  terms  of  (as  a  function  of)  this 
past  event ;  while  the  bead  theory  would  let  us  look 
only  to  the  present  condition  of  neuro-muscular 
tissue,  the  '  so-to-say  stored  stimuli.'  These  are  of 
course  an  integral  part  of  the  causal  process,  but  not 
the  more  enlightening  part;  just  as  the  measure- 
ments of  the  velocity  of  a  body  at  successive  mo- 
ments are  an  integral  part  of  its  fall  to  earth,  while 
if  we  considered  nothing  but  these,  we  should  never 
arrive  at  the  true  law  of  fall — a  constant  accelera- 
tion toward  the  earth's  center.  Or  it  is  again  as 
if,  when  one  had  photographed  the  spectrum  of  a 
newly-discovered  earth,  one  were  misled  by  the  bead 
theory  into  considering  the  result  as  '  merely  light 
and  dark  parallel  lines  on  a  gelatine  negative.'  It 
is  this,  indeed,  but  it  is  also  an  interesting  combina- 
tion of  metallic  spectra.  Or,  again,  the  camera 
photographs  a  motor-car  race,  and  the  sensitive 
plate  is  affected  a  millionth  of  a  second  later  than 
that  in  which  the  phase  photographed  occurred. 
By  the  time  the  print  is  obtained  the  race  is  long 
since  over.  The  bead  theory  then  says:  This  is 
only  a  black-and-white  mottled  slip  of  paper,  it  is 
no  function  of  the  racing  motors.    It  is  in  just  this 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION  171 

way  that  in  studying  behavior  we  think  that  the 
only  scientific  view  of  it  must  be  in  terms  of  ionized 
nerve  and  twitching  muscle.  Is  it  any  wonder, 
then,  that  having  ignored  the  objective  functional 
reference  of  behavior,  we  are  led  into  the  super- 
stition of  *  ideas '  in  the  *  sensorium '  which 
have  an  *  objective  reference '  to  the  environ- 
ment ? 

If  now  the  behaviorist  will  bear  in  mind  that  he 
is  scientifically  justified  in  asking  broadly.  What 
is  the  organism  doing?,  he  will  discover  that  it  is 
set  to  act  as  a  constant  function  of  some  aspect  of 
the  environment,  and  he  will  find  this  to  be  the 
scientific  description  of  the  phenomenon  he  is 
studying.  Then  with  this  accurate  description  as 
a  basis,  he  can  proceed  to  analyze  it  into  its  reflex 
components  and  the  relations  by  which  they  have 
been  organized  into  behavior. 

II.     Cognition  as  Response 

We  have  now  a  compact  and,  as  I  believe,  a  rather 
precise  definition  of  behavior  or,  as  it  might  be 
called,  the  relation  of  specific  response.  And  we  are 
in  a  position  to  compare  it  with  the  cognitive 
relation,    the    relation    between    the    '  psycholog- 


n«  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

ical  subject  and  its  object  of  consciousness.' 
Our  aim  would  be  to  see  how  far  those  phenom- 
ena which  we  ordinarily  attribute  to  *  conscious- 
ness '  may  be  intrinsically  involved  by  this 
strictly  objective  and  scientifically  observable 
behavior. 

Firstly,  as  to  the  object  cognized,  the  *  content 
of  consciousness.'  It  is  obvious  that  the  object  of 
which  an  organism's  behavior  is  a  constant  func- 
tion corresponds  with  singular  closeness  to  the 
object  of  which  an  organism  is  aware,  or  of  which 
it  is  conscious.  When  one  is  conscious  of  a  thing, 
one's  movements  are  adjusted  to  it,  and  to  pre- 
cisely those  features  of  it  of  which  one  is  conscious. 
The  two  domains  are  conterminous.  It  is  certain, 
too,  that  it  is  not  generally  the  stimulus  to  which 
one  is  adjusted,  or  of  which  one  is  conscious:  as 
such  classic  discussions  as  those  about  the  inverted 
retinal  image  and  single  vision  (from  binocular 
stimulation)  have  shown  us.  Even  when  one  is 
conscious  of  things  that  are  not  there,  as  in  hallu- 
cination, one's  body  is  adjusted  to  them  as  if  they 
were  there ;  and  it  behaves  accordingly.*    In  some 

•  I  have  elsewhere  tried  to  show  (in  the  fifth  essay  of 
"  The  New  Realism  ")  that  every  type  of  subjective  error 
has  an  analogue  in  the  strictly  physical  realm. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         173 

sense  or  other  they  are  there;  as  in  some  sense 
there  are  objects  in  mirrored  space.  Of  course  the 
objects  of  one's  consciousness,  and  of  one's  motor 
adjustments,  may  be  past,  present,  or  future:  and 
similar  temporally  forward  and  backward  func- 
tional relations  are  seen  in  many  inorganic  mechan- 
isms. If  it  be  thought  that  there  can  be  con- 
sciousness without  behavior,  I  would  say  that  the 
doctrine  of  dynamogenesis,  and  indeed  the  doctrine 
of  psycho-physical  parallelism  itself,  assert  just 
the  contrary.  Of  course  muscle  tonus  and  *  motor 
set '  are  as  much  behavior  as  is  the  more  extensive 
play  of  limb.  In  short,  I  know  not  what  distinc- 
tion can  be  drawn  between  the  object  of  conscious- 
ness and  the  object  of  behavior. 

Again,  if  the  object  of  which  behavior  is  a  con- 
stant function  is  the  object  of  consciousness,  that 
function  of  it  which  behavior  is  presents  a  close 
parallel  to  volition.  Psychological  theory  has 
never  quite  succeeded  in  making  will  a  content  of 
knowledge  in  the  same  sense  as  sensation,  percep- 
tion, and  thought;  the  heterogeneous  (motor- 
image)  theory  being  manifestly  untrue  to  rather 
the  larger  part  of  will  acts.  Indeed,  in  the  strict 
sense  the  theory  of  innervation  feelings  is  the  only 


174  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

one  which  ever  allowed  will  to  be,  in  its  own  right,  a 
content.  All  other  views,  including  the  hetero- 
geneous, show  one's  knowledge  of  one's  own  will 
acts  to  be  gained  by  a  combination  of  memory  and 
the  direct  observation  of  what  one's  own  body  is 
doing.  And  this  is  quite  in  harmony  with  the  idea 
that  what  one  wills  is  that  which  one's  body  does 
(in  attitude  or  overt  act)  toward  the  environment. 
In  a  larger  sense,  however,  and  with  less  deference 
to  the  tendencies  of  bead  theorizing,  one's  volitions 
are  obviously  identical  with  that  which  one's  body 
in  the  capacity  of  released  mechanism  does.  If  a 
man  avoids  draughts,  that  is  both  the  behavior  and 
the  volition  at  once,  and  any  motor-image,  '  fiat,' 
or  other  account  of  it  merely  substitutes  some 
subordinate  aspect  for  that  which  is  the  immediate 
volition.* 

The  case  is  somewhat  different  if  we  inquire 
what  in  behavior  corresponds  to  the  *  knower '  of 
the  cognitive  relation.  Clearly  this  knower  can  be 
nothing  but  the  body  itself;  for  behaviorism,  the 
body  is  aware,  the  body  acts.  But  this  body  will 
hardly  take  the  place,  in  many  minds,  of  that  meta- 
physical *  subject '  which  has  been  thought  to  be 
*Cf.  "The  Concept  of  Consciousness,"  1914,  Chap.  XIV. 


EESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         175 

the  very  nucleolus  of  the  ego.  Yet  something  can 
be  said  for  the  neuro-muscular  organism  in  the 
capacity  of  cognitive  subject.*     In  so  far  as  the 

*  subject '  is  supposed  to  serve  as  the  center  of  per- 
ception and  apperception  and  guarantor  of  the 

*  unity '  of  consciousness,  the  central  nervous  sys- 
tem will  serve  admirably.  In  fact  it  is,  precisely,  a 
perdurable  central  exchange  where  messages  from 
the  outer  world  meet  and  react  on  one  another  and 
on  *  the  so-to-say  stored  stimuli,'  and  whence  the 
return  impulses  emerge.  Furthermore  it  is  securely 
established  that  by  just  as  much  as  this  central 
nervous  exchange  has  its  unity  impaired,  by  just 
so  much  is  the  unity  of  apperception  (including  the 
'transcendental')  impaired.  Dissociation  of  the 
neural  complex  means  dissociation  of  personality, 
cognitive  as  well  as  volitiorial.  Again,  in  so  far  as 
the  metaphysical  *  subject '  is  defined  as  the  '  neces- 
sary correlate '  of  the  object  in  knowledge,  the 
body  may  well  serve  this  function.  For  in  the 
response  relation,  as  above  defined,  it  does  precisely 
this:  without  the  body  the  outer  object  would  ob- 
viously never  become  the  object  of  behavior.    And 

*  We  shall  consider  the  soul  as  essence  of  personality 
further  on. 


176  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

should  otherwise  the  response  relation  turn  out  to 
be  the  cognitive  relation,  the  physical  organism 
will  necessarily  take  its  place  as  '  correlate  of  the 
object,'  and  supersede  the  metaphysical  subject.  I 
am  not  aware  that  this  *  subject '  has  ever  served 
any  other  actually  empirical  wants,  useful  as  it 
may  be  in  the  higher  flights  of  speculation.  And 
one  recalls  that  of  this  more  transcendental  aspect 
of  the  *  subject '  James  said,  that  "  the  *  Self  of 
selves,'  when  carefully  examined,  is  found  to  con- 
sist mainly  of  the  collection  of  these  peculiar 
motions  in  the  head  or  between  the  head  and 
throat."  *  It  will  be  recalled,  too,  that  so  faithful 
an  idealist  as  Schopenhauer  found  reason  to  de- 
clare that  "  the  philosophers  who  set  up  a  soul  as 
this  metaphysical  kernel,  i.e.,  an  originally  and  es- 
sentially knowing  being,"  have  made  a  false  asser- 
tion. For,  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  knowing  is  a  sec- 
ondary function  and  conditioned  by  the  organism, 
just  like  any  other."  f  I  venture  to  predict  that 
behaviorism  will  be  able  to  give  a  complete  account 
of  cognition  without  invoking  the  services  of  the 

•  "William  James,  "  Principles  of  Psychology,"  Vol.  I, 
p.  301. 

t  Schopenhauer,  "  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,"  Vol.  II, 
Chap.  XIX.    (Eng.  transl.,  1886,  Vol.  II,  p.  462.) 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         177 

*  metaphysical  subject'  nor  of  any  one  of  its 
swarming  progeny  of  Ego's. 

We  have  seen  that  behavior,  as  "  any  process  of 
release  which  is  a  function  of  factors  external  to 
the  mechanism  released,"  in  so  far  accounts  for  the 
phenomena  of  cognition  that  it  provides  a  content 
of  knowledge,  a  wilier,  and  a  knower.  Let  us  now 
consider  it  in  respect  to  three  remaining  psycho- 
logical phenomena:  attention,  feeling,  and  per- 
sonality. 

Attention  is  the  most  difficult  of  these  topics, 
and  the  problem  resolves  itself,  to  my  mind,  the 
most  neatly :  this  problem  being,  What  in  behavior 
would  correspond  to  attention  in  cognition?  Sup- 
pose, however,  that  we  first  ask.  What  in  the  atten- 
tion of  empirical  psychology  corresponds  to  *  at- 
tention '  as  understood  by  the  more  or  less  still- 
current  faculty  and  rational  psychologies?  These 
latter  say  that  the  *  soul '  is  unitary,  and  that  it 

*  attends  '  to  one  *  idea  '  at  a  time,  or  to  a  unified 
group  of  *  ideas.'  It  follows  that  there  are  *  ideas  ' 
to  which  the  soul  is  not  attending;  also,  quite  in- 
evitably, that  attention  is  the  act  of  attending. 
Bon!  On  the  empirical  side  we  have  attention  as 
"  the  taking  possession  by  the  mind,  in  clear  and 


178  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

vivid  form,  of  one  out  of  what  seem  several  simul- 
taneously possible  objects  or  trains  of  thought."  * 
The  essentials  in  this  definition  are  will,  clearness 
or  vividness  (degrees  of  consciousness),  selection 
(or  its  converse,  inhibition).  The  volitional  ele- 
ment in  behavioristic  attention  will  be,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  the  process  whereby  the  body  as- 
sumes and  exercises  an  adjustment  or  motor  set 
such  that  its  activities  are  some  function  of  an 
object ;  are  focused  on  an  object.  The  selection  or 
inhibition  factor  has  already  been  so  unanimously 
explained  in  terms  of  neuro-muscular  augmenta- 
tion and  inhibition  that  I  need  not  dwell  on  it 
further.  Clearness,  vividness,  or  degree  of  corir 
sciousness  is  the  crux.  And  this  is  in  fact 
what  the  faculty  and  rationalistic  accounts 
of  attention  have  come  down  to  in  empirical  psy- 
chology. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  say  that  empirical  psy- 
chology has  now  merely  renamed  attention,  and 
called  it  *  clearness.'  It  has  analyzed  the  faculty  of 
*  attention,'  and  by  separating  out  the  factors 

*  James,  "Principles  of  Psychology,"  Vol,  I,  pp.  403-4. 
In  this  definition  James  has  summed  up  with  singular  brevity 
all  the  factors  which  have  persistently  maintained  their 
place  in  the  historical  development  of  attention. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         179 

(volitional,  etc.)  that  belong  elsewhere,  it  has 
found  the  core  in  *  clearness,'  or,  better,  grades  of 
consciousness.  But  I  cannot  see  that  empirical 
psychology  has  done  more  than  this.  It  teaches 
that  there  are  degrees  of  being  conscious ;  and  this 
is  a  singular  doctrine,  for  it  goes  much  against 
the  grain  to  say  that  an  idea  can  be  more  or  less 
conscious.  From  the  nature  of  the  case  introspec- 
tion cannot  help  here,*  for  one  cannot  attend  to  an 
idea  of  any  of  the  lesser  grades  of  clearness,  idem 
est,  to  an  idea  which  is  not  attended  to.  The  no- 
tion savors  of  Spencer's  '  Unknowable,'  of  which  he 
knew  so  much.  In  an  acute  discussion  of  this  con- 
cept Barker  says :  "  When  it  is  said  that  clearness 
is  a  simple  and  indefinable  attribute  comparable 
with  quality,  intensity,  extension,  and  duration,  I 
simply  do  not  find  in  the  statement  the  description 
of  anything  which  I  can  recognize  in  my  own  ex- 
perience." t  I  bring  forward  these  considerations 
in  order  not  to  disparage  the  *  clearness  '  doctrine, 
but  to  show,  if  possible,  exactly  what  it  is  that 

*  Certain  introspective  investigations  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding. I  recommend  the  reader  to  consult  these. 
Cf,  Titchener,  "Lectures  on  the  Elementary  Psychology  of 
Feeling  and  Attention,"  1908,  pp.  211  et  seq. 

t  H.  Barker,  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society, 
1912-13,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  270. 


180  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

behaviorism  must  account  for  if  it  is  to  account 
for  attention. 

Now  there  are  psychological  phenomena  which 
have  seemed  to  argue  for  this  notion  of  *  clearness.' 
The  first  is  that  ideas  come  into  consciousness  and 
go  out  of  it,  and  that  this  process  is  oftentimes, 
apparently,  not  instantaneous.  Ideas  recede  before 
they  vanish,  as  objects  recede  in  space:  a  sort  of 
consciousness  perspective.  And  this  variation  is 
not  in  the  dimension  of  intensity.  But  this  ob- 
servable waxing  and  waning  of  ideas  may  be  other- 
wise interpreted  than  as  grades  of  consciousness. 
On  the  basis  of  a  psychological  atomism  (otherwise 
an  inevitable  doctrine)  this  so-called  *  clearness  ' 
dimension  would  come  down  to  the  thesis  that  the 
atomic  elements  occur  in  groups  of  various  degrees 
of  organization ;  that  the  most  coherently  organized 
groups  are  the  '  clear '  or  '  vivid '  states  (or  ideas)  ; 
that  the  elements,  which  themselves  are  either  in  or 
not  in  *  consciousness,'  enter  consciousness  unorgan- 
ized and  are  there  built  up  into  '  clear  '  states ;  and 
*  that  again  these  clear  states  more  or  less  disin- 
tegrate before  their  component  elements  pass  out  of 
consciousness.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that 
this  view,  which  is  of  course  not  new,  squares  per- 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         181 

fectly  with  the  phenomena  of  fringe  of  conscious- 
ness; and  with  the  intently  observed  fading  of 
images.  In  this  way  '  attention '  would  be  reduced 
not  to  the  '  attribute  of  clearness,'  but  to  the 
process  of  organization  and  deorganization  of  con- 
tent-atoms. I  find  nothing  in  Leibnitz,  to  whom 
the  doctrine  of  clearness  and  obscurity  in  ideas 
owes  so  much,  which  would  oppose  this  interpreta- 
tion. 

Now  if  attention  is  found  to  be  such  a  process, 
then  our  view  of  behavior  not  merely  allows  for,  but 
it  predicts  the  attention  process.  Any  complex 
form  of  behavior  is,  of  course,  organized  out  of 
simpler  responses,  which  do  not  always  slip  into 
the  higher  form  of  integration  instantaneously. 
Their  more  or  less  gradual  organization  is  the 
process  of  attention.  One  sits  down  unguardedly 
in  a  public  waiting-room,  and  presently  one's  train 
of  thought  is  interrupted  by  *  something,'  which 
changes  almost  instantly  to  *  something  I  am  sit- 
ting upon.'  This  already  has  involved  a  very 
different  motor  attitude  from  that  in  force,  while 
one  was  idly  whiling  the  time  away.  At  this  junc- 
ture, if  one  brings  the  entire  faculty  of  attention 
to  bear  on  the  *  something,'  taking  care,  however, 


182  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

not  to  move  one's  body,  for  this  would  bring  in  a 
multitude  of  new  peripheral  data,  I  do  not  think 
that  this  *  something'  will  gain  in  'clearness.'  It 
may,  however,  change  to  '  extra  pressure  at  a  point 
on  the  underside  of  my  thigh.'  Here,  it  seems  to 
me,  if  one  still  does  not  move,  all  the  *  attention ' 
possible  will  not  make  this  pressure  *  clearer  ' ;  it  is 
such  an  intensity  of  pressure,  and  there  it  is.  Next, 
this  pressure  will  probably  change  back  to  *  some- 
thing,' and  '  something '  will  change  to  *  pocket- 
book,'  '  gold  ring,'  *  sticky  piece  of  candy,  *  apple 
core,'  '  soiled  handkerchief,' — each  involving  a  new 
motor  attitude ;  as  one  is  soon  convinced  if  *  some- 
thing '  happens  to  change  to  *  possibly  a  snake.' 
If  new  peripheral  data  are  admitted,  of  course  the 
search  for  enhanced  '  clearness  '  in  the  originally 
given  piece  of  content  is  even  more  complicated  and 
dubious.  The  commonly  alleged  cases  of  increased 
*  clearness  '  are  cases  of  augmented  sensory  data 
(producing  greater  specificity  of  attitude)  ;  this  is 
flagrantly  so  in  the  often-cited  transition  of  an 
object  from  peripheral  to  foveal  vision.  Here  the 
series  may  be  '  something,'  spot,  gray  spot,  yellow- 
gray  spot,  yellow  irregular  spot,  yellow  sort  of 
semicircular  thing,  yellowish-orange  dome-shaped 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         183 

object,  orange  dome-shaped  bright  object  with  ir- 
regularity at  top,  orange  lamp-shade,  lighted 
lamp  with  orange  shade,  on  table.  But  this  is  not 
increased  *  clearness.'  Here,  as  before,  the  re- 
sponse attitude  has  steadily  changed  (and  de- 
veloped). I  have  tried  for  years  to  find  a  plausible 
instance  of  changing  '  clearness  '  or  *  vividness  ' 
and  for  evidence  of  *  levels  of  attention ' ;  but  the 
search  has  been  in  vain. 

According  to  the  clearness  doctrine,  even  when  a 
content  is  built  up  to  greater  definition  and  detail 
(Leibnitz's  '  distinctness  ')  by  the  addition  of  new 
components,  the  original  elements  ought  presum- 
ably to  gain  in  clearness.  But  the  general  tend- 
ency seems  to  be,  rather,  that  they  actually  dis- 
appear. A  first  glance  at  an  unfamiliar  object 
usually  yields  salient  features  like  color  and  form ; 
under  attentive  observation  the  content  develops 
into  a  thing  of  higher  interest  in  which,  unless  there 
are  special  reasons  wherefor  they  remain  impor- 
tant, form  and  color  are  lost.  An  archeologist  will 
soon  lose  ('pay  no  attention  to')  the  color  or 
mere  contour  of  a  new  find  which  he  is  intently 
studying.  A  jeweler  would  probably  remain  con- 
scious of  the  color  of  a  new  gem  which  he  is  examin- 


184  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

ing;  but  here  it  should  seem  that  this  color,  if  it 
changes  at  all,  does  not  gain  *  clearness,*  but  a 
definite  nuance;  which  is  a  very  different  matter. 
Interest,  *  Aufgabe  *  and  *  Bewusstseinslage  * 
(which  are  the  psychologist's  names  for  motor  set) 
determine  what  shall  come  or  go,  and  how  contents 
shall  develop. 

But  not  all  psychologists  interpret  attention  in 
terms  of  *  clearness.'  This  latter  is  an  attribute  of 
content,  and  there  is  a  tendency  in  several  inde- 
pendent quarters  to  assign  to  process,  or  some 
aspect  of  process,  various  phenomena  which  have 
been  in  the  past  referred  to  content.  The  interpre- 
tation of  attention,  not  as  *  clearness,'  but  as  the 
organization  process  of  psychic  elements  (as  above 
described),  is  a  familiar  case  in  point.  The  *  image- 
less  thought '  movement  is  another.  Association- 
ism  described  thought  as  the  interaction  of  con- 
tent units  ('  ideas  '),  while  this  theory  describes  it 
as  interplay  without  content.  Again  the  various 
groups  of  thinkers  who  employ  the  now-familiar 
cliches  of  *  act,'  *  psychischer  Aht,^  and  *  psychische 
Funktion '  are  tending  in  the  same  direction ;  that 
is,  toward  emphasizing  process  of  consciousness 
more  than  content.     Now  I  should  be  far  from 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         185 

arguing  that  there  can  be  interplay  without  ideas 
as  the  basis  of  it.  Such  a  thing  seems  to  me  un- 
true to  fact,  and  in  theory  I  can  understand  it  no 
more  than  I  can  how  there  should  be  motion  with 
nothing  to  move,  or  relation  with  no  entities  to  be 
related.  But  I  mention  this  tendency  to  emphasize 
process,  only  in  order  to  point  out  that  how- 
ever much  of  it  shall  turn  out  to  be  empirically 
valid,  so  much  behaviorism  will  find  no  trouble 
in  taking  care  of.*  For  the  responding  mechan- 
ism presents  any  amount  of  process;  all  too 
much,  indeed.  For  both  content  and  process  of 
cognition  the  specific  response  relation  has  a 
place. 

A  further  aspect  of  attention  remains  uncon- 
sidered. This  is  attention  at  its  lowest  or  *  uncon- 
scious '  stage.  Even  should  attention  generally  be 
found  to  consist  not  in  a  clearness  attribute,  but  in 
degrees  of  organization  of  content,  there  would 
still  remain  to  be  accounted  for  those  facts  which 
so  persistently  through  the  history  of  psychology 
have  kept  alive  the  distinction  of  conscious  and  un- 
conscious, the   latter  being  again  distinct  from 

*  Cf.,  in  this  connection,  the  brilliant  work  of  N.  Kostyleff, 
"Le  M^canisme  c6r6bral  de  la  pens6e,"  Paris,  1914. 


186  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

*  mere  cerebration.'  This  distinction,  obscure  and 
disputed  and  yet  invincible  as  it  has  been,  becomes 
luminously  construed  and  wholly  justified  if  cog- 
nition is  identified  with  the  behavior  relation. 
With  the  establishment  of  the  first  specific  re- 
sponse, out  of  the  integration  of  reflexes,  there  is 
of  course  content  (of  an  atomic,  elementary  order, 
very  possibly).  But  this  content  could  never  be 
identified  with  brain,  nor  with  cerebration :  for  it  is 
that  object  or  aspect  of  the  environment,  to  which 
the  brain  reflexes  are  adjusted,  of  which  they  are 
now  constant  functions.  What  will  happen,  now, 
to  these  elementary  objective  contents  when  these 
primitive  specific  responses  are  still  further  in- 
tegrated into  more  elaborate  forms  of  behavior? 
They  will  obviously  not  turn  into  *  cerebration,'  for 
they  are  aspects  of  the  environment.  Well,  what 
in  fact  happens,  in  such  a  case,  to  consciousness? 
When  one  first  learned  to  walk,  the  process  in- 
volved lively  consciousness  of  pressure  on  the  soles, 
and  at  diff^erent  intensities  in  the  two  feet ;  of  visible 
objects  which  one  carefully  watched  in  order  to 
steady  oneself,  etc.,  etc.  One  now  walks  with  head 
in  air  and  in  almost  total  oblivion  of  the  steadying 
visual  objects  and  the  unfeeling  tactual  objects 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         187 

with  sharp  comers,  the  stairs  and  the  inclines, 
which  it  was  once  so  wise  to  keep  in  view.  At  first 
one  stepped,  and  each  step  was  an  adventure  in 
itself;  now  one  walks,  or  perhaps  not  consciously 
even  this ;  for  one  may  consciously  not  be  walking 
or  running,  but  catching  a  train,  thinking  over  a 
lecture,  bracing  oneself  to  do  a  sharp  stroke  of 
business.  The  walking  behavior,  although  no  less 
behavior  and  no  less  involving  functional  adjust- 
ment toward  the  environment  and  hence  no  less 
involving  *  content,'  has  now  been  taken  up  (along 
with  other  behavior  systems)  and  made  component 
of  a  more  highly  integrated  and  elaborate  form  of 
behavior.  This  latter  it  now  serves.  And  the 
object  or  objective  situation  to  which  the  latter  is 
a  functional  adjustment  is  almost  always  more 
and  more  remote  from  the  immediate  momentary 
stimuli  than  are  the  objects  of  which  the  component 
systems  are  functions.  For  the  behavior  relation 
all  of  the  environmental  aspects  to  which  the  or- 
ganism is  in  any  wise  responding  are  content ;  all 
are  *  in  consciousness.'  But  what  portion  of  all 
this,  then,  is  the  *  attentive  consciousness,'  the 
upper  level  of  personal  awareness?  Why,  obvi- 
ously, the  upper  level  consists  of  that  object  or 


188  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

system  of  objects  to  which  the  upper  level  of  in- 
tegrated behavior  is  specifically  adjusted.  The  at- 
tentive level  of  consciousness,  that  of  which  the 
*  self '  is  aware,  is  that  most  comprehensive  en- 
vironmental field  to  which  the  organism  has  so  far 
attained  {by  integration)  the  capacity  to  respond.* 
The  attentive  level  at  any  particular  moment  is 
the  most  comprehensive  field  to  which  the  organism 
is  at  that  moment  specifically  responding  (of 
which  its  behavior  is  a  function).  All  other  aspects 
of  the  environment,  to  which  the  ancillary  and  com- 
ponent behavior  systems  are  at  the  time  respond- 
ing, are  *  coconscious,'  '  subconscious,'  *  uncon- 
scious ' — as  you  prefer ;  but  they  are  not  brain,  nor 
cerebration,  nor  neurogramme.  They  are  in  con- 
sciousness, but  not  in  the  upper  field  of  attention. 
In  other  words,  the  most  highly  integrated  be- 
havior system  that  is  in  action  determines  the  per- 
sonal level  of  attention.  If  I  stop  *  thinking 
about '  (comprehensively  responding  to)  the  forth- 
coming business  engagement  to  which  my  legs  are 
now  carrying  me,  I  can  consciously  walk ;  if  I  cease 
this,  I  can  consciously  take  a  single  step ;  ceasing 

*Cf.   Knight  Dunlap,  "An  Outline  of  Psychobiology." 
Baltimore,  1914,  p.  114. 


EESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         189 

this  I  can  consciously  merely  equilibrate  in  an  erect 
posture ;  ceasing  this  I  become  conscious  of  pres- 
sure on  the  soles  of  my  two  feet.  The  one  change 
in  this  series  has  been  the  steady  reduction  in  the 
comprehensiveness  of  my  bodily  response.  The 
*  stream  of  consciousness '  is  nothing  but  this 
selected  procession  of  environmental  aspects  to 
which  the  body's  ever-varying  motor  adjustments 
are  directed.* 

This  explains,  as  no  other  view  has  ever  ex- 
plained, the  relation  of  automatic  or  habitual  to 
conscious  activities.  Habitual  activities  are  usu- 
ally performed  below  the  attentive  level,  because 
as  soon  as  any  behavior  system  is  organized 
(*  learned ')  the  organism  goes  on  to  integrate  this, 
together  with  others,  into  some  more  comprehen- 
sive system ;  and  concomitantly  the  first  mentioned 
system  sinks  into  the  field  of  the  coconscious  or 
unconscious.  This  is  the  purpose  of  education, 
the  meaning  of  development.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  seems  to  be  no,  even  the  most  simple  and 
habitual,  activity  that  cannot,  and,  on  occasion,  is 
not,  performed  consciously.    What  the  organism 

*  I  shall  attempt  at  an  early  date  to  show  how  success- 
fully this  view  replaces  the  association  doctrine. 


190  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

shall  be  aware  of  depends  solely  on  what  it  is  do- 
ing; and  it  can  do  anything  which  it  ever  learned 
to  do,  whether  complex  or  simple.  The  remarkable 
harmony  between  this  view  and  the  facts  is  brought 
out  if  one  turns  to  the  other  views.  One  theory, 
for  instance,  has  it  that  the  cerebral  cortex  is  the 
*seat  of  consciousness,'  while  habituated  uncon- 
scious acts  are  done  by  the  cerebellum  and  cord. 
From  which  it  follows  that  when  a  motion  is  first 
learned  (for  this  appears  to  be  always  a  conscious 
process)  it  is  learned  by  the  cerebrum,  but  there- 
after it  is  performed  by  the  cerebellum  and  cord 
(which  never  learned  it) .  A  most  plausible  concep- 
tion! And  thereafter,  since  it  can  be  performed 
either  consciously  or  unconsciously,  a  double  set  of 
nervous  mechanisms  is  maintained  in  readiness !  Or 
again,  there  is  a  view  that  *  consciousness  '  is  com- 
parable to  resistance,  or  heat,  developed  at  neural 
cell  or  synapse.  Unconsciousness  in  a  process  is 
attained  when  the  neural  path  is  worn  so  *  smooth ' 
that  no  appreciable  heat  is  developed.*  When,  then, 
an  act  has  once  become  automatic  it  cannot  be  per- 
formed consciously,  unless  the  organism  releams  it 

•This  view,  or  some  variation  of  it,  has  been  advocated 
hy  Spencer,  Romanes,  Mercier,  Wm.  McDougall,  and  others. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         191 

in  a  new  set  of  nerves.  This  patently  violates  the 
facts.* 

Lastly,  in  leaving  this  view  of  the  attentive  level 
and  the  coconscious  levels,  I  must  drop  the  hint 
that  it  will  be  found  to  throw  a  flood  of  light  on  the 
otherwise  Cimmerian  darkness  that  now  sur- 
rounds *  unconscious  sensations,'  *  unconscious 
judgments,'  and  'illusions  of  judgment';  not  to 
mention  more  modem  categories  such  as  *  Aufgabe,* 
*  Bewusstseinslage,*  Freud's  upper  and  lower  *  in- 
stances,' and  double  personality  with  all  its  allied 
problems.  Nothing  could  be  more  inspiriting  to  a 
believer  in  the  purely  objective  psychology,  if  de- 
jected, than  to  read  in  the  light  of  our  definition 
of  behavior  what  Weber,  for  instance,  had  to  say 
about  *  steUvertretender  Verstand,'  t  or  again 
Euler,  Helmholtz,  Hering,  or  Mach  about  *  uncon- 
scious judgments';  such  vistas  of  unforced  and 
lucid  explanation  are  here  opened  out. 

Another  phenomenon  that  seems  to  be  more  or 
less  universally  involved  in  cognition  is  feeling,  and 

*  Cf.  E.  B.  Holt,  "  The  Concept  of  Consciousness,"  1914, 
p.  324  et  seq. 

fE.  H.  Weber,  "Der  Tastsinn  und  das  Gemeingefiihl," 
1846,  in  Wagner's  "  Handworterbuch  der  Physiologie,"  Bd. 
Ill,  S.  484  et  teq. 


192  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

our  question  is  whether  the  behavior  relation  makes 
such  a  phenomenon  intelligible.  Here,  again,  psy- 
chology is  not  very  clear  as  to  how  the  phenomenon 
is  to  be  described.  The  early  view  that  feelings 
are  two  content  elements — ^pleasantness  and  un- 
pleasantness— gave  way  first  to  the  idea  that  feel- 
ings are  two  opposed  attributes  of  content,  making 
one  distinct  dimension  comparable  with  intensity 
(the  *  feeling-tone  '  theory).  Then  more  recently 
there  has  been  a  marked  tendency  (which  was  in- 
deed adumbrated  much  earlier),  as  in  the  case  of 
attention,  to  refer  the  phenomenon  to  process 
rather  than  to  content,  because  it  seems  certain  that 
pleasantness  is«essentially  connected  with  enhanced, 
unpleasantness  with  diminished,  consciousness  and 
activity.  Some  degree  of  avoidance  inevitably  at- 
tends the  unpleasant,  and  so  forth ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  impossible  to  lay  hold  of  any  dis- 
tinct pleasantness  or  unpleasantness  *  content.'  * 

•  The  only  recent  theory  which  I  know,  that  of  Titchener, 
which  definitely  makes  feeling  a  content,  at  the  same  time 
declares  it  to  lack  the  'attribute  of  clearness';  while  other 
psychologists,  as  Miinsterberg,  declare  that  a  content  which 
lacks  this  attribute  ipso  facto  ceases  to  exist.  Wundt's  tri- 
dimensional theory  appears  to  make  feeling  either  a  kines- 
thetic sensation,  or  else  a  function  thereof  (i.e.,  not  a  con- 
tent, but  a  process). 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         193 

One  thing,  which  from  the  behavioristic  point  of 
view  seems  obvious,  is  that  feeling  is  some  modi- 
fication of  response  which  is  determined  by  factors 
within  the  organism.  No  dependable  and  direct 
correspondence  between  feeling  phenomena  and  the 
environment  appears.  This  fact  was  noted  ex- 
tremely early,  and  has  indeed  often  served  as  a 
clinching  argument  for  the  subjectivist  point  of 
view.  But  if  one  considers  what  the  organism  is — 
a  vast  congeries  of  microscopic  cells,  and  each  one 
a  chemical  process  which  is  practically  never  in  ex- 
act equilibrium,  whose  very  use,  indeed,  involves  a 
disturbance  of  any  even  relative  equilibrium,  where, 
further,  the  whole  is  at  every  moment  both  absorb- 
ing and  disbursing  energy  of  several  kinds — ^then 
it  becomes  downright  unthinkable  that  in  any  be- 
havior which  such  an  organism  succeeds  in  evolv- 
ing, the  constant  functions  which  this  is  of  objects 
in  the  environment  should  not  be  further  compli- 
cated by  variant  factors  contained  in  the  mechan- 
isms which  are  maintaining  these  functions;  just 
as  the  constant  of  gravity  is  complicated  by  skin 
friction,  wind,  and  other  forces  which  act  on  fall- 
ing bodies.  The  phenomenon  of  *  feeling '  is  pre- 
dictable from  our  definition  of  behavior  and  a 


194  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

rudimentary  acquaintance  with  living  tissue. 
Where  in  the  organism  the  feeling  process  is  to  be 
sought,  or  in  which  aspect  of  neuro-muscular  inter- 
play, cannot,  I  think,  be  advisedly  inquired  until 
the  phenomenon  has  been  more  exactly  described. 
Meanwhile  behaviorism  is  embarrassed,  not  by  the 
difficulty  of  explaining  feeling,  but  by  the  very 
wealth  of  alternative  which  it  finds  at  its  disposal. 
It  can  well  afford  to  wait  until  psychologists  get 
something  that  at  least  resembles  a  scientific  de- 
scription of  that  which  they  call  *  feeling.'  Mean- 
while the  closer  they  have  come  to  anything  exact, 
the  nearer  they  have  come  to  the  position  above 
outlined.  Such  a  theory  as  that  of  Meyer  *  is 
straight  behaviorism. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  if,  according  to  our 
definition  of  behavior,  feeling  is  a  complication  that 
the  organism  as  such  introduces  in  the  function 
which  behavior  is  of  the  environment,  we  see  imme- 
diately why  feeling  is  not  unrelated  to  stimulus  and 
why  it  is  closely  related  to  will.  Feelings  are  more 
or  less,  but  never  mfallihly,  determined  by  the 
stimuli.     If  one  gives  simultaneously  two  *  incon- 

•  M.  Meyer,  "  The  Nervous  Correlate  of  Pleasantness  and 
Unpleasantness,"  Psychol.  Bev.,  1908,  XV,  pp.  201-216; 
393-333. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         195 

gruous  '  stimuli,  the  organism  commonly  *  feels  un- 
pleasantness/ which  is  due,  if  appearances  are  not 
deceptive,  to  the  interferences  which  each  stimulus 
exerts  on  the  response  which  the  other  alone  would 
have  called  forth.  Introspectively  one  says, "  Those 
two  things  do  not  harmonize,  they  conflict,"  or  in 
observing  another  organism  one  says,  "  Its  re- 
sponses are  impeded."  Now  it  is  within  the  organ- 
ism that  these  stimuli  interfere,  and  only  by  rea- 
son of  the  existence  and  idiosyncrasies  of  the 
organism  that  they  do  interfere.  Thus  feeling  is  a 
complication  of  response  due  to  factors  within  the 
organism.  It  is  now  clear  why  *  feeling '  is  not 
found  in  the  evolutionary  series  lower  than  where 
*  behavior  '  is  found.  As  the  subjectivist  is  so  fond 
of  saying,  "  None  but  a  *  conscious '  creature  can 
feel."    'Tistrue. 

And  again,  if  feeling  is  an  internally  determined 
modification  of  the  behavior  function  and  this  lat- 
ter, as  previously  explained,  is  the  will,  it  is  clear 
enough  why  feeling  and  will  are  bound  to  be  con- 
comitant phenomena.  And  whatever  empirical 
truth  there  may  be  in  the  *  pleasure-pain  theory ' 
of  will  will  find  ample  recognition  and  explanation 
in  this  fact.     It  shows,  too,  why  will  is  possible 


196  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

without  feeling,  while  feeling  is  not  possible  without 
will.*  And  once  again,  if  will  is  behavior  that  is 
function  of  an  object,  and  feeling  is  an  ex  machina 

*  Nuancirung  '  of  this  function,  while  the  *  content 
of  consciousness '  is  the  outer  object  to  which  the 
behavior  function  is  directed,  one  sees  how  a  con- 
fusion might  arise  as  to  whether  feeling  was  a 

*  Nuancirung '  of  the  motor  attitude  or  of  the  ob- 
ject of  that  attitude.  That  such  a  confusion  is 
prevalent  is  shown  by  James  in  his  essay,  "The 
Place  of  Affectional  Facts  in  a  World  of  Pure  Ex- 
perience." t 

We  come,  lastly,  to  what  is  called  *  personality  ' 
and  the  behavior  relation.  I  have  already  pointed 
out  that  for  behaviorism  will  is  that  function  which 
the  organism's  behavior  is  of  the  object.  These 
various  functions  are  of  different  degrees  of  in- 
tegration, and  in  a  well-knit  character  they  have 
become  organized  (as  fast  as  each  developed)  with 

•  A  disputed  point,  of  course.  I  believe  that  the  facts 
(and  an  adequate  conception  of  the  will)  quite  support  my 
statement.  In  such  a  word  as  'apathetic,'  which  should 
refer  to  feeling  alone,  the  notion  of  feeling  has  been  actually 
superseded  by  that  of  will. 

t  This  Journal,  Vol.  II,  pp.  281-287.  And  *  pathetic '  has 
thus  come  to  refer  to  the  object,  the  situation. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         197 

one  another  into  higher  forms  of  behavior,  and  if 
this  process  has  not  been  thwarted  by  untoward  cir- 
cumstance, they  are  at  every  period  of  life  in- 
tegrated to  date.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  at  any 
moment  of  life  some  course  of  action  (behavior) 
which  enlists  all  of  the  capacities  of  the  organism : 
this  is  phrased  voluntaristically  as  *  some  interest 
or  aim  to  which  a  man  devotes  all  his  powers,'  to 
which  '  his  whole  being  is  consecrated.'  This  mat- 
ter of  the  unthwarted  lifelong  progress  of  behavior 
integration  is  of  profound  importance,  for  it  is  the 
transition  from  behavior  to  conduct,  and  to  moral 
coTiduct.  The  more  integrated  behavior  is  har- 
monious and  consistent  behavior  toward  a  larger 
and  more  comprehensive  situation,  toward  a  bigger 
section  of  the  universe;  it  is  lucidity  and  breadth 
of  purpose.  And  it  is  wonderful  to  observe  how 
with  every  step  in  this  process  the  bare  scientific 
description  of  what  the  organism  does  approaches 
more  and  more  to  a  description  of  moral  conduct. 
In  short,  all  of  the  more  embracing  behavior 
formulae  (functions)  are  moral.  The  behaviorist 
has  not  changed  his  strictly  empirical,  objective 
procedure  one  iota,  and  he  has  scientifically  ob- 
served the  evolution  of  reflex  process  into  morality. 


198  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

The  reader  shall  illustrate  this  for  himself.  Take 
any  instance  of  wrong  conduct  as,  say,  a  child's 
playing  with  fire,  and  consider  why  it  is  wrong  and 
how  must  it  change  to  become  right.  It  is  wrong 
simply  because  it  is  behavior  that  does  not  take  into 
account  consequences ;  it  is  not  adjusted  to  enough 
of  the  environment;  it  will  be  made  right  by  an 
enlargement  of  its  scope  and  reach.  This  is 
just  what  the  integration  of  specific  responses 
effects ;  and  through  it,  as  I  have  remarked  previ- 
ously, the  immediate  stimulus  (ever  the  bugbear 
of  moralists)  recedes  further  and  further  from 
view. 

The  entire  psychology  of  Freud  is  a  discussion 
of  the  miscarriages  which  occur  in  this  lifelong 
process  of  integration,  their  causes  and  remedies. 
Freud  believes,  and  seems  to  have  proven,  that 
thwarted  integration  (called  by  some  *  dissocia- 
tion ')  is  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  mental  and 
nervous  disease.  For  Freud's  *  wish '  is  precisely 
that  thing  which  in  my  definition  of  behavior  I  call 
*  function';  it  is  that  motor  set  of  the  organism 
which,  if  opposed  by  other  motor  sets,  is  functional 
attitude  toward  the  environment,  and  which,  if 
unopposed,  actuates  the  organism  to  overt  behavior 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         199 

which  is  a  constant  function  of  the  environment.* 
The  evil  resulting  from  thwarted  integration  is 
*  suppression  ' — ^where  one  motor  set  becomes  or- 
ganically opposed  to  another,  the  two  are  disso- 
ciated and  the  personality  is  split:  whereas  the 
two  should  have  been  harmoniously  knit  together, 
cooperating  to  produce  behavior  which  is  yet  more 
far-reachingly  adapted  to  the  environment.  The 
sane  man  is  the  man  who  (however  limited  the 
scope  of  his  behavior)  has  no  such  suppression 
incorporated  in  him.  The  wise  man  must  be  sane, 
and  must  have  scope  as  well. 

A  further  and  important  conclusion  which  I  be- 
lieve has  not  yet  been  drawn,  but  which  foUows 
necessarily  from  Freud's  behavioristic  psychology 
(for  such  it  is),  is  that  only  the  sane  man  is  good 
and  only  the  sane  man  is  free.  For  the  man  with 
suppressions  is  capable  of  no  act  which  some  part 
of  his  own  nature  does  not  oppose,  and  none  which 
this  now  suppressed  part  will  not  probably  some 
day  in  overt  act  undo.  There  is  no  course  of 
action  into  which  he  can  throw  his  whole  energy, 
nothing  which  he  can  '  wish '  to  do  which  he  does 

•The  reader  will  find  a  fuller  account  of  this  view  of 
will,  morals,  and  function  in  my  chapter  on  Volition  in 
"The  Concept  of  Consciousness." 


200  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

not  wish,  to  some  extent  and  at  the  same  time,  not 
to  do.  Thus  he  can  never  do  the  *  good  '  unre- 
servedly, never  without  secret  rebellion  *  in  his 
heart.'  And  such  a  man  is  not  good.  In  the  same 
way  he  is  never  free,  for  all  that  he  would  do  is 
hindered,  and  usually,  in  fact,  frustrated,  by  his 
own  other  self.  This  fact,  so  brief  in  the  state- 
ment, has  been  copiously  illustrated  by  Freud  and 
is  extraordinarily  illuminating  to  one  who  is  trying 
to  observe  and  to  understand  human  conduct  at 
large.  One  soon  sees  that  in  the  most  literal  sense 
there  is  no  impediment  to  man's  freedom  except  a 
self-contained  and  internal  one.  In  thus  showing 
that  virtue  and  freedom  derive  from  the  same 
source  Freud  and  behaviorism  have  empirically 
confirmed  that  doctrine  of  freedom  which  Socrates 
and  Plato  propounded,  and  which  even  religion  has 
deemed  too  exalted  for  human  nature's  daily  food — 
the  doctrine  that  only  the  good  man  is  free.* 

Such  for  behaviorism  is  the  personality  or  the 
soul.  It  is  the  attitude  and  conduct,  idem  est,  the 
purposes,  of  the  body.  In  those  happy  individuals 
in  whom  the  daily  integration  of  behavior  is  suc- 

•  Freud's  verification  of  this  is  far  more  complete  than 
in  my  brief  outline. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         201 

cessfuUy  accomplished  the  soul  is  a  unit  and  a 
moral  unit.  In  others  in  whom  the  integration  has 
been  frustrated  the  soul  is  not  a  unit,  but  a  col- 
lection of  warring  factions  seated  in  one  distracted 
body.  Such  a  creature  has  not  one  soul,  but  many, 
and  misses  of  morals  and  of  freedom  by  exactly  as 
much  as  it  has  missed  of  unity,  that  is,  of  the  pro- 
gressive integration  of  its  behavior.  According  to 
this  view  the  soul  is  not  substantial  and  not  cor- 
poreal ;  but  it  is  concrete,  definite,  empirically  ob- 
servable, and  in  a  living  body  incorporated — a  true 
*entelechy.'  With  such  a  doctrine  of  personality 
and  the  soul  as  this,  behaviorism  can  rest  unper- 
turbed while  the  sad  procession  of  Spirits,  Ghost- 
Souls,  *  transcendental '  Egos,  and  what  not,  passes 
by  and  vanishes  in  its  own  vapor.  For  all  of  these 
are  contentless  monads,  and  they  have  no  windows. 
In  fine,  for  behaviorism  there  is  one  unbroken  in- 
tegration series  from  reflex  action,  to  behavior,  con- 
duct, moral  conduct,  and  the  unified  soul. 

In  the  first  part  of  this  article  I  expressed  the 
opinion  that  behaviorists  have  not  fully  realized  the 
significance  of  what  they  are  doing  because,  while 
in  practice  they  have  discarded  it,  in  theory  they 
still,  like  most  psychologists,  adhere  to  the  *  bead 


202  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

theory  '  of  causation.  Now  their  opponents,  who 
believe  in  *  consciousness '  and  a  subjective  soul- 
principle,  are  equally  addicted  to  another  view  of 
causation,  the  teleological.  This  view,  however, 
which  indeed  does  justice  to  a  feature  of  causation 
which  the  bead  theory  ignores,  is  equally  wide  of 
the  truth.  The  functional  view  combines  and 
reconciles  the  two,  and  accounts  for  *  teleology.' 
This  is  why  the  behaviorist  who,  whatever  his 
theory,  practices  the  functional  view,  finds  in  his 
phenomena  no  residue  of  unexplained  *  teleological ' 
behavior.  For  brevity  I  must  let  a  single  illustra- 
tion suffice  to  show  this.  Why  does  a  boy  go  fish- 
ing? The  bead  theory  says,  because  of  something 
in  his  'previous  state.'  The  teleological  theory 
says,  because  of  an  *  idea  of  end '  in  his  *  mind ' 
(subjective  categories).  The  functional  theory 
says,  because  the  behavior  of  the  growing  organism 
is  so  far  integrated  as  to  respond  specifically  to 
such  an  environmental  object  as  fish  in  the  pond. 
It,  too,  admits  that  the  boy's  *  thought '  (content) 
is  the  fish.  But  now  a  mere  attitude  or  motor  set 
could  condition  the  same  *  idea  of  end ' — the  fish — 
and  it  need  go  no  further ;  so  that  the  *  idea  of  end ' 
has  no  causal  efficacy  whatsoever.  This  latter  is  sup- 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         203 

plied  by  that  further  influx  of  nervous  energy  which 
touches  off  the  motor  set  and  makes  it  go  over  into 
overt  behavior.  The  whole  truth  of  teleology  is 
taken  up,  and  rectified,  in  that  objective  reference 
which  behavior  as  function  of  an  object  provides 
for.  It  is  to  be  empirically  noted  otherwise  that  the 
*  idea  of  end '  is  totally  inefficacious  causally,  for 
more  »ften  than  not  it  is  merely  an  idee  fixe,  which 
indicates  the  presence  of  an  habitually  aimless  and 
irresolute  will. 

m.     Conclusion 

In  the  foregoing  pages  I  have  offered  what  I  be- 
lieve to  be  a  somewhat  more  exact  definition  of 
behavior  or  specific  response  than  any  that  I  have 
previously  met,  and  have  attempted  to  show  that 
this  behavior  relation,  objective  and  definite  as  it 
is,  can  lay  considerable  claim  to  being  the  long- 
sought  cognitive  relation  between  '  subject '  and 
object.  For  my  own  part  I  make  no  doubt  that  the 
cognitive  relation  is  this,  although  my  definition  of 
behavior  may  have  to  be  overhauled  and  improved 
in  the  light  of  future  empirical  discoveries.  It  fol- 
lows that  I  believe  the  future  of  psychology,  human 


204  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

as  well  as  animal,  to  lie  in  the  hands  of  the  be- 
haviorists  and  of  those  who  may  decide  to  join 
them.  I  wish  to  add  a  word  on  the  pragmatic 
aspect  of  the  objective  movement  in  psychology 
and  philosophy. 

So  far  as  modern  philosophy  goes  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  several  present-day  tendencies  to  resolve 
the  subjective  category  of  soul-substance  into  ob- 
jective relations  all  take  their  origin  in  the  conten- 
tions of  the  eighteenth-century  materialists.  In 
this  the  writings  of  the  French  and  English  ideolo- 
gists, sensationalists,  and  other  empiricists  (includ- 
ing such  naturalists  as  Charles  Bonnet)  have  not 
been  without  influence.  One  might  even  find,  for 
instance,  a  behaviorist's  charter  in  the  following 
words  of  Joseph  Priestley :  "  I  cannot  imagine  that 
a  human  body,  completely  organized,  and  having 
life,  would  want  sensation  and  thought.  This  I 
suppose  to  follow,  of  course,  as  much  as  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  follows  respiration."  * 

In  the  actual  present  this  objective  tendency  is 

represented  by  groups  of  men  whose  interests  are 

otherwise  so  divergent  that  it  may  not  be  amiss  to 

point  out  their  fundamental  unanimity  of  aim. 

•"Disquisitions    Relating   to    Matter    and    Spirit,"    2d 
edition,  1782,  Vol.  I,  section  XIII,  p.  151. 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         205 

There  are  at  least  four  such  groups — the  American 
realists,  the  English  realists,  the  French  and  Rus- 
sian *  objective  '  psychologists,  and  the  '  behavior- 
ists.'  I  think  that  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  per- 
suade the  Freudians  that  they,  too,  are  objectivists 
— a  fifth  group.  Possibly  the  Pragmatists  would 
be  another.  And  I  should  have  mentioned  Radical 
Empiricists  at  the  top  of  the  list  if  I  detected  the 
existence  of  any  such  group. 

The  American  realists  have  been  so  explicitly 
conscious  of  their  aim  to  abolish  the  subjective 
(*  consciousness,'  etc)  and  to  interpret  mental 
phenomena  in  an  objective  relational  manner,  and 
they  have  written  so  often  in  this  very  Journal^ 
that  I  need  say  nothing  further.  It  would  be  un- 
just of  me,  without  very  careful  study,  to  attempt 
to  weigh  the  individual  contributions  of  these 
realists,  but  I  must  say  in  passing  that  in  the  early, 
very  lean  and  hungry  years  of  American  realism 
yeoman's  service  was  rendered  by  Professors  Wood- 
bridge  and  Montague.  At  the  present  time  all  of 
these  realists,  for  their  number  is  no  longer  merely 

*  Six,'  seem  definitely  to  have  escaped  the  *  ego- 
centric predicament '  and  to  have  repudiated  the 

*  subjective,  as  such.'     It  seems  to  me  that  they 


g06  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

stand  in  need  of  a  positive  theory  of  cognition,  and 
that  they  will  find  this  if  they  will  consider  the  ways 
of  the  patient  animal-behaviorist.  Cognition  exists 
in  the  animals,  and  there  in  its  simpler  and  more 
analyzable  forms. 

The  English  *  realists  '  are  all,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  Cartesian  dualists  of  one  complexion  or  an- 
other. But  they  are  all,  or  nearly  all,  animated  by 
the  desire  to  be  released  from  the  bondage  of  sub- 
jectivism. In  so  far  they  have  a  common  aim  with 
the  American  realists,  and  might  find  it  worth  while 
to  examine  cognition  in  its  infrahuman  forms. 

The  Russian  and  French  objective  psychologists 
are  determined,  just  as  James  has  urged  and  as  the 
behaviorist  is  doing,  to  abandon  the  ghost-soul. 
They  are  further  determined  to  discover  all  the 
phenomena  of  consciousness  in  some  or  other  reflex 
processes.  If  they  succeed,  theirs  is  clearly  bound 
to  be  a  relational  theory  of  consciousness.  And 
they  are  thus  the  natural  allies  of  all  realists. 

The  behaviorists  themselves  are,  as  I  have  said, 
in  practice  the  one  great  luminary  of  the  psy- 
chologic sky.  In  theory  they  need,  I  think,  as  in 
this  present  paper  I  have  tried  to  outline,  an  exact 
definition  of  what  behavior  is.    They  are  to-day  in 


RESPONSE  AND  COGNITION         207 

danger  of  making  the  materialist's  error,  of  deny- 
ing the  facts,  as  well  as  the  theory,  of  conscious- 
ness. Thus  Bethe,  in  his  fascinating  book  "  Diirfen 
wir  den  Ameisen  und  Bienen  psychische  Qualitaten 
zuschreiben  ?  "  *  describes  much  of  the  complex  be- 
havior of  ants  and  bees  exactly  (and  in  the  sense 
which  I  have  previously  commended),  but  then  adds 
that,  since  we  can  explain  all  these  phenomena  in 
terms  of  reflex  process,  we  have  no  right  to  *  im- 
pute consciousness  '  to  these  little  creatures.  He 
fails  to  see  that  he  has  been  describing  conscious- 
ness. This  method,  pursued,  would  end  by  picking 
out  the  single  reflex  components  of  human  behavior, 
neglecting  the  equally  important  relations  in  which 
they  are  organized,  and  by  then  concluding  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  sensation,  perception,  or 
thought.  Just  as  one  might  accurately  describe 
each  wheel  of  a  watch,  and  then  conclude  that  it  is 
not  a  timepiece ; '  time  '  not  being  visible  in  any  one 
of  the  wheels.  But  this  would  be  to  miss  alto- 
gether that  novelty  which  arises  during  the  in- 
tegration of  reflex  process  into  behavior.  As  I 
have  tried  to  show,  behaviorism  is  neither  subjectiv- 
ism, nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it  materialism  (in 

•  Bonn,  1898. 


208  THE  FREUDIAN  WISH 

the  accepted  sense  of  that  term — the  sense,  that  is, 
in  which  the  facts  of  consciousness  are  slurred  over 
or  even  repudiated  outright) . 

As  to  the  others,  it  is  my  belief  that  both  the 
Freudians  and  the  pragmatists  will  find  a  number 
of  baffing  points  in  their  own  systems  explained, 
and  these  systems  extended  and  fortified,  if  they 
will  consider  whether  cognition  for  them  is  not  es- 
sentiaUy  contained  within  the  behavior  relation.* 
That  this  is  true  for  Freudianism  I  shall  attempt 
to  demonstrate  in  the  near  future. 

In  fine,  it  should  seem  that  a  fundamental  unity 
of  purpose  animates  the  investigators  of  these  sev- 
eral groups,  although  they  approach  the  question 
of  cognition  from  very  different  directions.  Will 
it  not  be  a  source  of  strength  for  all  if  they  can 
manage  to  keep  a  sympathetic  eye  on  the  methods 
and  the  discoveries  of  one  another.? 

*  I  would  commend  to  them  Professor  John  B.  Watson's 
valiant  and  clear-headed  volume,  "Behavior"  (New  York, 
1914);  also  Professor  Wm.  McDougall's  very  instructive 
"Social  Psychology"  (London,  1914),  although  this  latter 
with  more  reserve  since  it  is  not  untainted  with  sub- 
jectivism. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Appetite,  107  f. 

Aristotle,  49,  95,  97,  135,  140 

Attention,  177  ff. 

Bead  theory,  157,  160  f., 
169  f,,  201  f. 

Behavior,  52  flf .,  68,  78  f., 
87  f.,  91,  125,  155  f.,  160  ff., 
164  ff.,  167,  177,  206  f. 

Censor,  14,  16,  27  f. 
Character,  7,  13,  28  f.,  196  f. 
Cognition,      82,      96  f.,      99, 

171  ff.,  203 
Conduct,  4,  101,  132,  197  f. 
Conflict  (  see  also  Dilemma), 

5,  125  ff.,  137  f.,  195 
Content  of  consciousness,  47, 

97,  155  f.,  172  f.,  186  ff. 

Darwin,  Charles,  20,  61  f. 
Dilemma,    111,    115,    118  ff., 

130  f.,  136. 
Discrimination,  123  f.,  127  f., 

134  f.,  142,  148 
Dissociation,  105,  128 
Dreams,  5  ff. 
Dynamic  psychology,  4,  47 


Hegel,  135  ff. 

Incoherence,  7  f.,  121 
Integration,    118,    122,    142, 

145  ff.,  155,  165,  196  f.,  201 
Interference,  5,  7,  31,  63  f., 

68,  74  f,,  127 
Introspection,  57,  83,  87  f.,  91 

James,  William,  61,  69,  71, 

89,  176,  178,  196 
Jones,  Dr.  Ernest,  32 

Knower,  174  ff. 

Language,  110 
Learning,   69  ff.,   74,   101  ff., 
106 

Mephistopheles,  143,  147 

Morality,  147  f. 

Moral   sanction,    105  f.,   109, 

112  f.,  124,  130  ff.,  141,  151, 

198 
Motor  attitude,  4,  59  ff.,  94, 

97  f.,  173 


Plato,  139  ff.,  200 

Priestley,  204 

Prince,  Dr.  Morton,  45 


Ego    complex,    13,    24,    35, 
37  f.,  115  f.,  147 

Energy,  4,  20 

Ethics    {see  also   Morality),  Bealpolitik,  151 

100  ff.,     112,     132  f.,     141,  Remorse,  11,  14  f 

148  ff.  Response,  49  f . 


Feeling,  191  ff. 
Freedom,  140  ff.,  200  f . 


Schadenfreude,  22,  26,  37 
Schopenhauer,  176 


211 


212 


INDEX 


Sexual  appetite,  iv,  108 

Sleep,  14 

Slips  of  the  pen  or  tongue, 

32  «. 
Socrates,  139  S.,  200 
Soul,  49,  65,  95,  118,  142,  176, 

200  f. 
Specific  response,  52  ff.,  58, 

76,  153  flf.,  188 
Spinoza,  60,  81 
Stimulus,  recession  of,  75  ff., 

80,  91  f.,  164  f.,  187 
Subconscious,  31,  40,  88,  144, 

185  ff.,  191 
Suppression,  5,  17,  27  f.,  37, 

101,  105,  118,  120,  127  f., 

132,  142,  199 
STmtralism,  10 
Sympathy,  22,  107 


Teleology,  54,  56,  59,  65  f., 

93  ff.,    100  f.,    108  f.,    132, 

162,  202  f. 
Thomas,  140 
Thought  and  will  are  one,  6, 

60  f.,  81,  98,  125,  131 
Thought-transference,  46 
Truthfulness,     30  f.,     112  f., 

114,  117 

Virtue,  125,  132,  135,  140  ff., 
147,  197  f. 

Will,  95,  139  ff.,  173  f.,  195  f. 
Wish,     3     (defined),     48  f., 

56  f.,  59,  94  f.,  99  f.,   131, 

151,  198 
Wit,  17  ff. 


9  J  •  JU 


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